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%\)t HibersiDe iliteratuix Series? 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE 



BREAKFAST-TABLE 



Cber^ a^an \)i^ oton 115o0tDell 



BY 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



WITH BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



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HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

Boston : 4 Park Street ; New York : 11 East Seventeenth Straet 
Chicago : 378-388 Wabash Avenue 

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Copyright, 1858, 1882, 1886, and 1891, 
By OLIVER WENDELL HOLMESo 

Copyright, 1895, 
By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

All rights reserved. 
Wjd. M. Pollo«l5. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 3Tass., U. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company. 



^L/^ yK[j 



1 



CONTENTS. 



Biographical Sketch v 

To THE Readers of the Autocrat xvii 

Preface to the Riverside Edition xx 

The Autocrat's Autobiography xxii 

The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table .... 1 

Index ''•"*-j , . . . 315 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

Until a few years ago there stood in Cambridge, 
Massachusetts, near Austin Hall, the domicile of the 
Law School of Harvard College, an old wooden house 
which had a double historic interest, making it a com- 
panion to Craigie House, its neighbor, which had been 
Washington's headquarters during the siege of Bos- 
ton, and the home for many years of the poet Long- 
fellow. For, in the early days of the Revolution, 
when studies at Harvard College were suspended, this 
old gambrel-roofed house had been the headquarters 
of General Artemas Ward and of the Committee of 
Safety. Upon the steps of the house stood President 
Langdon of Harvard College, so tradition says, and 
prayed for the men, who, halting there a few mo- 
ments, marched forward under Colonel Prescott's lead 
to throw up entrenchments on Bunker Hill on the 
night of June 16, 1775. And here, August 29, 1809, 
was born Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the great 
group of Americans who laid the foundations of 
American literature. 

Dr. Holmes's father carried forward the traditions 
of the historic house, for he was the Rev. Dr. Abiel 
Holmes whose American A finals was the first care- 



VI BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

fill record of American history written after the Re- 
volution. He married the daughter of Judge Oliver 
Wendell, whose name thus descended to a grandson, 
and his connection with other New England worthies 
transmitted the blood and the memories of men and 
women of that sturdy New England stock which was 
the native aristocracy so proudly honored by the poet, 
as in his famous verses on Dorothy Q. 

In his The Professor at the Breakfast- Table 
Hohnes has dwelt at length upon his memories of the 
Gambrel Roofed House in which he was born, and in 
many passages in his prose writings, notably in the 
paper entitled Cinders from the Ashes. He has re- 
counted the experiences of a happy childhood, and has 
shown how closely he observed the characteristics and 
characters of his fellows and of the people whom he 
met. A part of his school life was spent in a neighbor- 
ing school, where fellow pupils were Richard Henry 
Dana, to become famous very early in life by his Two 
Years before the Mast., and Margaret Fuller, the bril- 
liancy of whose conversation made her the chosen com- 
panion of Emerson and his associates, and whose fame 
as an intellectual woman has not been eclipsed by the 
crowd of women in New England who since her day 
have written and spoken. At the age of fifteen he was 
sent to Phillips Academy in Andover, and in his poem 
The School-Boy he has left a delightful reminiscence 
of his own experience, and characterization of his 
comrades. 

He spent a year in special preparation for college, 
and then entered Harvard College with the class that 
was to graduate in 1829. In those days the classes 
at college were smaller than now% and as they all 
joined in common studies the members of a class 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. Vll 

came to know one another familiarly and to have 
such a sense of organic unity that long after college 
days, when the members were scattered and rarely 
came together, each still felt himself a member of his 
" class," as he might feel himself a citizen of some 
particular city. There were indeed members of the 
class of 1829 who were to become famous in aftei 
years, — Benjamin Peirce, the great mathematician, 
whose speech about his science was like a musical ex- 
ercise ; Benjamin Robbins Curtis, the great lawyer ; 
Charles Sumner, the great publicist ; Wendell Phil- 
lips, the great orator, who was a cousin of Holmes ; 
and John Lothrop Motley, the great historian. But 
the class enjoyed a distinction not granted to other 
classes, for though another class a few years later had 
a great poet in James Russell Lowell, this alone had 
a poet who year after year, at the class meeting, sang 
for them a song of memory and affection. It was 
the same song sung in many keys, and some of the 
music could not be shut up within narrow limits, but 
has found universal acceptance in such lines as Bill 
and Joe, 

Holmes began to write poetry when in college, and 
some of his best-known early pieces like Evening^ hy a 
Tailoi\ The Meeting of the Dryads^ The Spectre Pig^ 
were contributed to The Collegian^ an undergraduate 
journal, while he was studying law the year after his 
graduation. At the same time he wrote the well- 
known poem Old Ironsides^ a protest against the pro= 
posed breaking up of the frigate Constitution ; the 
poem was printed in the Boston Daily Advertiser, and 
its indignation and fervor carried it through the 
country and raised such a popular feeling that the 
ship was saved from an ignominious destruction. He 



viil BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

did not carry his study of law very far, but turned 
aside to the study of medicine, and to complete his pre- 
paration went to Europe, where he could gain the ad- 
vantage of more scientific training in Paris and Edin- 
burgh. He has recounted his experiences in those 
cities both in discourses before medical societies, in 
random passages in his prose writings, and in the pre- 
liminary chapter to Our Hundred Days in Europe ; 
and one curious souvenir of his early visit was a pic- 
ture after Herring, of Plenipotentiary, the winner of 
the Derby race which he saw in 1834, a picture which 
hung on the wall of his study to the last. He himself 
has told in animated verse the tale of another race in 
Hoia the Old Horse won the Bet. 

Holmes returned to Harvard in 1836, and took his 
degree in medicine. At the same time he delivered a 
poem, Poetry^ a Metriccd Essay, before the Phi Beta 
Kappa Society of the college, and ever after the pro- 
fession of medicine and the art of letters received his 
united care and affection. In 1838 he was appointed 
Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Dartmouth 
College, but remained in that position only a twelve- 
month, when he returnd to Boston, married a daugh- 
ter of Judge Jackson, and settled down to the practice 
of medicine. In 1847 he was made Parkman Pro- 
fessor of Anatomy and Physiology in the Medical 
School of Harvard College, a position which he re- 
tained until the close of 1882, when he retired to de- 
vote himself more exclusively to literature. 

The contributions which he made to the literature 
of medicine are preserved for the most part in the 
volume of his collected works which bears the title 
Medical Essays, 18Jf2-1882, but these garnerings of 
forty years bear but small proportion to the body of 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. IX 

his writing and speaking on professional topics dur- 
ing an active devotion to his pursuit, for his work as 
professor might well have stood as the full and suffi- 
cient labor of a busy life. But, as we have intimated, 
his devotion to literary art ran parallel to his devo- 
tion to medical science. Like other men of his time 
he was in demand as a lyceum lecturer, where he was 
known as a witty and humorous writer with a turn 
for satire. He was known also as a student of letters, 
and gave one course at least, on The English Poets 
of the Nineteenth Century^ before the Lowell Institute 
in Boston, which created great enthusiasm. These 
lectures have never been published, but the reader of 
Dr. Holmes's poems will recall certain vignettes which 
were poetical postludes to these lectures. 

He scattered his poems and occasional prose papers 
in such modest periodicals as Boston had when he was 
a young man ; he printed small volumes of verse, and 
in 1849 Ticknor and Fields issued a collected volume 
of his poems. He was known in a limited but choice 
circle as a brilliant talker, but the opportunity of his 
life came when in 1857 the publishing firm of Phillips 
and Sampson in Boston projected a magazine which 
should at once be the vehicle for the best writing of 
the best American authors, and should draw its moral 
inspiration from the anti-slavery spirit which was 
rising into a strong wind. The story of the founding 
of The Atlcmtlc Monthly has been told in a recent 
number of it,^ by Mr. John T. Trowbridge, who was 
an early contributor. Dr. Holmes gave it its name. 
James Russell Lowell was the choice of every one for 
its editor, and Lowell himself made it a condition that 
Dr. Holmes should be a constant contributor. The 

1 January, 1895. 



X BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

editor knew the capabilities of his author, but it is 
not at all likely that either he or Dr. Holmes fore- 
saw the great vogue which the magazine would have 
through the series bearing the happy title, Tha Auto- 
crat of the Breakfast-Tahle^ which oj^ened in the 
first number of the new magazine. The Autocrat was 
followed by The Professor, and that by The Poet ; 
and in this the writer distinctly says, what the observ- 
ant reader of the series will be pretty sure to discover 
for himself : — 

" I have unburdened myself in this book, and in 
some other pages, of what I was born to say. Many 
things that I have said in my riper days have been 
aching in my soul since I was a mere child. I say 
aching, because they conflicted with many of my in- 
herited beliefs, or rather traditions. I did not know 
then that two strains of blood were striving in me for 
the mastery — two ! twenty, perhaps — twenty thou- 
sand, for aught I know — but represented to me by 
two — paternal and maternal. But I do know this : 
I have struck a good many chords, first and last, in 
the consciousness of other people. I confess to a ten- 
der feeling for my little brood of thoughts. When 
they have been welcomed and praised, it has pleased 
me ; and if at any time they have been rudely handled 
and despitefully treated, it has cost me a little worry. 
I don't despise reputation, and I should like to be re- 
membered as having said something worth lasting 
well enough to last." 

This passage briefly presents three very noticeable 
characteristics of Dr. Holmes's prose as contained in 
the series of Atlantic papers and stories. They give 
the mature thought of the writer, held back through 
many years for want of an adequate occasion, and 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. XI 

ripened in his mind during this enforced silence ; they 
ilkistrate the effect upon his thought of his professional 
studies, which predisposed him to treat of the natural 
history of man, and to import into his analysis of the 
invisible organism of life the terms and methods em- 
ployed in the science of the visible anatomy and physi- 
ology ; and finally they are warm with a sympathy for 
men and women, and singularly felicitous in their ex- 
pression of many of the indistinct and half-understood 
experiences of life. For their form it may be said that 
the impression produced upon the reader of the Auto- 
crat series, which was finally gathered into a volume, is 
of a growth rather than of a premeditated artistic com- 
pleteness. The first suggestion, as he points out in 
The Autoc7'afs Autobiography^ is found in the two 
papers under the title of The Autocrat of the Break- 
/'«s^-J'a6^e, published in The Neio England Magazine 
for November, 1831, and January, 1832. These were 
written by Dr. Holmes shortly after his graduation 
from college, and before he entered on his medical 
studies. They consist of brief epigrammatic observa- 
tions upon various topics, the desultory talk of a per- 
son engrossing conversation at a table. The form is 
monologue, with scarcely more than a hint at interrup- 
tions, and no attempt at characterizing the speaker or 
his listeners. Twenty-five years later, when The At- 
lantic Monthly was founded, the author remembering 
the fancy resumed it, and under the same title began 
a series of papers which at once had great favor and 
grew, possibly, beyond the writer's original intention. 
Twenty-five years had not dulled the wit and gayety 
of the exuberant young author; rather they had 
ripened the early fruit, and imparted a richness of fla- 
vor which greatly increased the value. The maturity 



Xll BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

was seen not only in the wider reach and deeper tone 
of the talk, but in the humanizing of the scheme. 
Out of the talk at the breakfast-table one began to 
distinguish characters and faces in the persons about 
the board, and before the Autocrat was completed 
there had appeared a series of portraits, vivid and full 
of interest. Two characters meanwhile were hinted 
at by the author rather than described or very pal- 
pably introduced, — the Professor and the Poet. It is 
not difficult to see that these are thin disguises for the 
author himself, who, in the versatility of his nature, 
appeals to the reader now as a brilliant philosopher, 
now as a man of science, now as a seer and poet. 
The Professo7' at the Breakfast- Table followed, and 
there was a still stronger dramatic power disclosed; 
some of the former characters remained, and others of 
even more positive individuality were added ; a ro- 
mance was inwoven and something like a plot sketched, 
so that, while the talk still went on and eddied about 
graver subjects than before, the book which grew out 
of the papers had more distinctly the form of a series 
of sketches from life. It was followed by two novels, 
Elsie Venner and The Guardian Angel. The talks 
at the breakfast-table had often gravitated toward 
the deep themes of destiny and human freedom ; the 
novels wrought the same subjects in dramatic form, 
and action interpreted the thought, while still there 
flowed on the wonderful, apparently inexhaustible 
stream of wit, tenderness, passion, and human sympa-= 
thy. Once more, fourteen years after the appearance 
of the first of the series, came The Poet at the Break- 
fast-Tahle. A new group of characters, with slight 
reminders of former ones, occupied the pages ; again 
talk and romance blended ; and playfulness, satire, 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. Xlll 

sentiment, wise reflection, and sturdy indignation fol- 
lowed in quick succession. 

The Breakfast-Table series forms a group indepen- 
dent of the intercalated novels, and, with its frequent 
poems, may be taken as an artistic whole. It is hardly 
too much to say that it makes a new contribution to 
the forms of literary art. The elasticity of the scheme 
rendered possible a comprehensiv^eness of material; 
the exuberance of the author's fancy and the fulness 
of his thought gave a richness to the fabric ; the poetic 
sense of fitness kept the whole within just boui\ds. 
Moreover, the personality of the author was vividly 
present in all parts. There are few examples of 
literature in the first person so successful as this. 

It is illustrative of the native, personal character of 
this series, so stamped with his genius, that when in 
his old age he felt a desire to write again, deliberately 
and at length, he returned to the same form, and in 
Over the Teacups essayed the old happy blending of 
prose and verse, the vivification of characters supposed 
to carry on discussion about a social board, when in 
reality one dominant voice is heard throughout, — 
that of the inventor of the characters. 

The Atlantic Monthly meanwhile afforded a con- 
venient vehicle for Dr. Holmes's thought on many sub- 
jects, and he contributed many independent papers 
and poems. One of the most notable was the paper 
entitled My Hunt for the Captain^ and detailed his 
experience when going to the seat of war in the fall of 
1862 on the occasion of the wounding of his son, who 
bears his father's name and is now a justice on the 
bench of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. 

When John Lothrop Motley died, Dr. Holmes 
wrote a sketch of him for the Massachusetts Histori- 



XW BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

cal Society, which was afterward expanded and pub- 
lished as a volume. He also wrote a volume on Kalph 
Waldo Emerson, which was published in The Ameri- 
can Men of Letters series ; and a novel, A Mortal 
Antipathy^ first issued as a serial in The Atlantic 
Monthly. 

In 1886 Dr. Hohnes and his daughter made a jour= 
ney to Europe. Most of the time was passed in Eng- 
land, where the journey was. like a Royal Progress. 
" The travellers," says the London Daily News., " had 
barely arrived when the invitations came pouring in 
upon them. They received their ' baptism of fire,' in 
that Ions: conflict which lasts throug-h the London sea- 
son, on the first evening of their arrival in town. It 
consisted of a dinner, where twenty guests, celebri- 
ties and agreeable persons, were assembled to meet 
them. The dinner was followed by a grand reception. 
Then began a perpetual round of social engagements. 
Breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, teas, receptions, two, 
three, and four deep of the evening, was the order of 
the waking hours. Society was charmed with the 
genial philosopher and poet. His courteous manner, 
his ready wit, the fascinating mobility of his counte- 
nance, made up a charming personality. There was 
something magnetic in the glance of his blue grey eye, 
in the hearty grasp of his hand. Dr. Holmes went to 
the Derby, impelled by the wish to live again the im- 
pressions of fifty years ago. But this time he went 
down in company with the Prince of Wales, and wit- 
nessed the race from the grand stand. The animation 
with which the old man describes Ormonde, the beau- 
tiful bay of the Duke of Westminster, flashing past 
ridden by Archer, belongs to spirits as buoyant as were 
those that stirred the blood of the youth half a cen- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. XV 

tury before." The record of the journey is preserved 
m Dr. ITohiies's Our Hundred Days in Europe. 

The zest with which Dr. Holmes entered into Eng^- 
lish life witnessed to his inheritance in the ancestral 
memories, but his long life in the city which he made 
his home bears witness still more surely to the com- 
manding trait of his character. He had the passion 
of local patriotism. 

No one need be told who has read his stirring ly- 
rics, his Bread and the Newspaper., his oration on The 
Inevitable Trial., and his sketch of Motley's life, how 
generous was his affection for the nation : but a great 
crisis brought these expressions to pass ; his familiar 
habit of mind was cordially local. His affection fast- 
ened upon his college, and in his college on his class ; 
he had a worthy pride in the race from which he had 
sprung, and the noble clannishness which is one of 
the safeguards of social morality ; he loved the city of 
his life, not with the merely curious regard of the 
antiquary, but with the passion of the man who can 
be at home only in one place ; and he held to New 
England as to a substantial entity, not a geographical 
section of some greater whole. 

He did not travel, because Boston and Nahant and 
Berkshire contented him. His laboratory was at hand ; 
human nature was under his observation from the van- 
tage-ground of home. With the instinct of a man of 
science, he took for analysis that which was most famil- 
iar to him, assured that in the bit of the world where 
he was born, and out of which he had got his nourish- 
ment, he had all he needed for the exercise of his wit. 

There is no more pathetic yet kindly figure in our 
literature than Little Boston. With poetic instinct. 
Dr. Holmes made him deformed, but not uoly. He 



XVI BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

put into him a fiery soul of local patriotism, and trans- 
figured him thus. Under the guise of a bit of nature's 
mockery he was enabled to give vent to a flood of feel- 
ing without arousing laughter or contempt. All Lit- 
tle Boston's vehemence of civic pride is a memorial in- 
scription, and whatever may be the fortune of the 
city, however august may be its presence, there lies 
imbedded in this figure of Little Boston a perpetual 
witness to an imperishable civic form. 

This concentration of his power and his affection 
has had its effect on Dr. Holmes's literary fame. He 
is another witness, if one were needed, to the truth 
that identification with a locality is a surer passport 
to immortality than cosmopolitanism. The local is a 
good starting-point from which to essay the universal. 
Thoreau j)erhaj)s affected a scorn of the world outside 
of Concord, but he helped make the little village a 
temple, and his statue is in one of the niches. Holmes, 
staying in Boston, brought the world to his door, and 
a society which is already historic will preserve him 
in its amber. 

He had a mellow evening of life. As one after 
another of his comrades left the world, he bade them 
good-by with a song. Thus in his old age he sang 
after Whittier and Parkman and Lowell ; at last his 
own voice was silent and there was no one left in his 
generation to sing his farewell, for he it was who 
brought up the rear of the procession of American 
writers of the great period, as one by one passed into 
the firmament of fame. 

He died in his home in Boston suddenly, while 
talking with his son, at half past one, Sunday after- 
noon, October 7, 1894. 



TO THE READERS OF THE AUTOCRAT OF 
THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 



Twenty-five years more have passed since the si- 
lence of the preceding twenty-five years was broken 
by the first words of the self-recording personage 
who lends his title to these pages, in the "Atlantic 
Monthly " for November, 1857. The children of 
those who first read these papers as they appeared 
are still reading them as kindly as their fathers and 
mothers read them a quarter of a century ago. And 
now, for the first time for many years I have read 
them myself, thinking that they might be improved 
by various corrections and changes. 

But it is dangerous to tamper in cold blood and in 
after life with what was written in the glow of an 
earlier period. Its very defects are a part of its or- 
ganic individuality. It would spoil any character 
these records may have to attempt to adjust them 
to the present age of the world or of the author. We 
have all of us, writer and readers, drifted away from 
many of our former habits, tastes, and perhaps beliefs. 
The world could spare every human being who was 
living when the first sentence of these papers was 
written ; its destinies would be safe in the hands of 
the men and women of twenty-five years and under. 



XVlll TO THE READERS OF THE AUTOCRAT. 

This book was written for a generation which knew 
nothing or next to nothing of war, and hardly dreamed 
of it ; which felt as if invention must have exhausted 
itself in the miracles it had already wrought. To-day, 
in a small sea-side village of a few hundred inhabit- 
ants, I see the graveyard fluttering with little flags 
that mark the soldiers' graves ; we read, by the light 
the rocks of Pennsylvania have furnished for us, all 
that is most important in the morning papers of the 
civilized world ; the lightning, so swift to run our er- 
rands, stands shining over us, white and steady as the 
moonbeams, burning, but unconsumed ; we talk with 
people in the neighboring cities as if they were at our 
elbow, and as our equipages flash along the highway, 
the silent bicycle glides by us and disappears in the 
distance. All ,these since 1857, and how much more 
than these changes in our every-day conditions ! I can 
say without offence to-day that which called out the 
most angry feelings and the hardest language twenty- 
five years ago. I may doubt everything to-day if I 
will only do it civilly. 

I cannot make over again the book and those which 
followed it, and I will not try to mend old garments 
with new cloth. Let the sensible reader take it for 
granted that the author would agree with him in 
changing whatever he would alter, in leaving out what- 
ever he would omit, if it seemed worth while to tam- 
per with what was finished long ago. The notes which 
have been added will not interrupt the cui'rent of the 
conversational narrative. 

I can never be too grateful for the tokens of regard 
which these papers and those which followed them 
have brought me. The kindness of my far-off friends 
has sometimes over-taxed my power of replying to 



TO THE READERS OF THE AUTOCRAT. XIX 

them, but they may be assured that their pleasant 
words were always welcome, however insufficiently ac- 
knowledged. 

I have experienced the friendship of my readers so 
long that I cannot help anticipating some measure of 
its continuance. If I should feel the burden of cor- 
respondence too heavily in the coming years, I desire 
to record in advance my gratitude to those whom I 
may not be able to thank so fully and so cordially as 
I could desire. 

Bevekly Farms, Mass., August 29, 1882. 



PREFACE TO THE RIVERSIDE EDITION. 



Another decade has nearly closed since the above 
Preface was written. The Autocrat still finds read- 
ers, among the young as well as among the old. The 
children of my early readers were writing to me about 
my books, especially The Autocrat, as I mentioned in 
that other Preface. Now it is the grandchildren who 
are stiU turnii^g to these pages, which I might well 
have thought would be voted old-fashioned, outworn, 
an unvalued bequest to posterity with Oblivion as re- 
siduary legatee. I have nothing of importance to add 
in the way of prefatory remarks. I can only repeat 
my grateful acknowledgments to the reading public at 
home and abroad for the hospitable manner in which 
my thoughts have been received. The expressions 
of personal regard, esteem, confidence, sympathetic 
affinity, may I not add affection, which this book 
has brought to me have become an habitual expe- 
rience and an untiring source of satisfaction. I have 
thanked hundreds, yes, thousands, and many thou- 
sands of these kind correspondents, until my eyes have 
grown dim and I can no longer read many of their 
letters except through younger eyes. If my hand does 
not refuse to hold the pen or to guide it in the form 
of presentable characters, an occasional cramp of a 
little muscle which knows its importance and insists 



PREFACE TO THE RIVERSIDE EDITION. XXI 

on having it recognized by striking^ after its own fash- 
ion, is a hint that I must at length do what I have 
long said I ought to do, content myself with an en- 
cyclical of thanks and write no more letters except 
to a few relatives and intimates. 

A single fact strikes me as worth mentioning. Ten 
years ago I said that there had been a feeling at the 
time when this book was written as if mechanical in- 
vention had exhausted itself. I referred in the Pre- 
face of 1882 to the new miracles of the telephone and 
of electric illumination. Since then a new wonder 
has been sprung upon us in the shape of the electric 
motor, which has already familiarized itself among us 
as a common carrier. It is not safe to speculate on 
what the last decade of the century may yet bring us, 
but it looks as if the wasted energies of the winds and 
the waters were to be converted into heat, light, and 
mechanical movement, in that mysterious form which 
we call electricity, so as to change the material condi- 
tions of life to an extent to which we can hardly dare 
to set limits. As to what social and other changes 
may accompany the altered conditions of human life 
in the coming era, it is safer to leave the question 
open to exercise the ingenuity of some as yet youth- 
ful, perhaps unborn Autocrat. 

0. W. H. 

Beverly Farms, Mass. , July 28, 1891. 



THE AUTOCRAT'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 



The interruption referred to in the first sentence of 
tlie first of these papers was just a quarter of a cen- 
tury in duration. 

Two articles entitled " The Autocrat of the Break- 
fast-Table" will be found in the "New England 
Magazine," formerly published in Boston by J. T. 
and E. Buckingham. The date of the first of these 
articles is November, 1831, and that of the second 
February, 1832. When " The Atlantic Monthly " was 
begun, twenty-five years afterwards, and the author 
was asked to write for it, the recollection of these 
crude products of his uncombed literary boyhood sug- 
gested the thought that it would be a curious experi- 
ment to shake the same bough again, and see if the 
ripe fruit were better or worse than the early wind- 
falls. 

So began this series of papers, which naturally 
brings those earlier attempts to my own notice and 
that of some few friends who were idle enough to read 
them at the time of their publication. The man is 
father to the boy that was, and I am my own son, as 
it seems to me, in those papers of the " New England 
Magazine." If I find it hard to pardon the boy's 
faults, others woidd find it harder. They will not, 
therefore, be reprinted here, nor, as I hope, anywhere. 



THE AUTOCRAT S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. XXlll 

But a sentence or two from them will perhaps bear 
reproduemg, and with these I trust the gentle reader, 
if that kind being still breathes, will be contented. 

— " It is a capital plan to carry a tablet with you, and, 
when you find yourself felicitous, take notes of your own 
conversation." — 

— " When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down 
my Dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful 
as that of sentences. The author may arrange the gems 
effectively, but their shape and lustre have been given by 
the attrition of ages. Bring me the finest simile from the 
whole range of imaginative writing, and I will show you a 
single word which conveys a more profound, a more accu- 
rate, and a more eloquent analogy." — 

— " Once on a time, a notion was started, that if all the 
people in the world would shout at once, it might be heard 
in the moon. So the projectors agi'eed it should be done 
in just ten years. Some thousand shij^loads of chronome- 
ters were distributed to the selectmen and other great folks 
of aU the different nations. For a year beforehand, noth- 
ing else was talked about but the awful noise that was to 
be made on the gi'eat occasion. When the time came, 
everybody had their ears so wide open, to hear the uni- 
versal ejaculation of Boo, — the word agreed upon, — that 
nobody spoke except a deaf man in one of the Fejee Isl- 
ands, and a woman in Pekin, so that the world was never 
so stiU since the creation." — 

There was nothing better than these things and 
there was not a little that was much worse. A young 
feUow of two or three and twenty has as good a right 
to spoil a magazine-full of essays in learning how to 
write, as an oculist like Wenzel had to spoil his hat- 
full ol eyes in learning how to operate for cataract, or 
an elegant like Brummel to point to an armful of fail 
ures in the attempt to achieve a perfect neck-tie. This 



XXIV THE AUTOCRAT S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

son of mine, whom I have not seen for these twen- 
ty-five years, generously counted, was a seK-willed 
youth, always too ready to utter his unchastised fan- 
cies. He, like too many American young people, got 
the spur when he should have had the rein. He there- 
fore helped to fill the market with that unripe fruit 
which his father says in one of these papers abounds 
in the marts of his native country. All these by-gone 
shortcomings he would hope are forgiven, did he not 
feel sure that very few of his readers know anything 
about them. In taking the old name for the new 
papers, he felt bound to say that he had uttered un- 
wise things under that title, and if it shall appear 
that his unwisdom has not diminished by at least half 
while his years have doubled, he promises not to re- 
peat the experiment if he should live to double them 
again and become his own grandfather. 

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
Boston, November 1, 1868. 



THE AUTOCEAT 

OF THE, 

BREAKFAST-TABLE. 



I. 

I WAS just going to say, when I was interrupted, 
that one of the many ways of classifying minds is 
under the heads of arithmetical and algebraical in- 
tellects. All economical and practical wisdom is an 
extension or variation of the following arithmetical 
formula : 2 -|- 2 = 4. Every philosophical proposition 
has the more general character of the expression 
a-{-h=^c. We are mere operatives, empirics, and 
egotists, until we learn to think in letters instead of 
figures. 

They all stared. There is a divinity student lately 
come among us to whom I commonly address remarks 
like the above, allowing him to take a certain share 
in the conversation, so far as assent or pertinent ques- 
tions are involved. He abused his liberty on this oc- 
casion by presuming to say that Leibnitz had the 
same observation. — No, sir, I replied, he has not. 
But he said a mighty good thiag about mathematics, 
that sounds something like it, and you found it, not 
in the original, but quoted by Dr. Thomas Reid. I 
will tell the company what he did say, one of these 
days. 



2 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

— If I belong to a Society of Mutual Admiration ? 
— I blush to say that I do not at this present moment 
I once did, however. It was the first association to 
which I ever heard the term applied ; a body of scien- 
tific young men in a great foreign city " who admired 
their teacher, and to some extent each other. Many 
of them deserved it ; they have become famous since. 
It amuses me to hear the talk of one of those beings 
described by Thackeray — 

" Letters four do form his name " — 
about a social development which belongs to the very 
noblest stage of civilization. All generous companies 

" The " body of scientific young men in a great foreign city " 
was the Societe d'Observation Medicale, of Paris, of which M. 
Louis was president, and MM. Barth, Grisotte, and our own 
Dr. Bowditch were members. They agreed in admiring their 
justly-honored president, and thought highly of some of their 
associates, who have since made good their promise of distinc- 
tion. 

About the time when these papers were published, the Sat- 
urday Club was founded, or, rather, fonnd itself in existence, 
without any organization, almost without parentage. It was 
natural enough that such men as Emerson, Longfellow, Agassiz, 
Peirce, with Ilawthorne, Motley, Sumner, when wilhin reach, 
and others who would be good company for them, should meet 
and dine together once in a while, as they did, in point of fact, 
every month, and as some who are still living, with other and 
newer members, still meet and dine. If some of them had not 
admired each other they would have been exceptions in the 
world of letters and science. The club deserves being remem- 
bered for having no constitution or by-laws, for making no 
speeches, reading no papers, observing no ceremonies, coming 
and going at will without remark, and acting out, though it did 
not proclaim the motto, " Shall I not take mine ease in mine 
inn ? " There was and is nothing of tho Bohemian element 
about this club, but it has had many good times and not a little 
good talking. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 6 

of artists, authors, philanthropists, men of science, 
are, or ought to be. Societies of Mutual Admiration. 
A man of genius, or any kind of superiority, is not 
debarred from admiring the same quality in another, 
nor the other from returning his admiration. They 
may even associate together and continue to think 
highly of each other. And so of a dozen such men., 
if any one place is fortunate enough to hold so many. 
The being referred to above assumes several false 
premises. First, that men of talent necessarily hate 
each other. Secondly, that intimate knowledge or 
habitual association destroys our admiration of 
persons whom we esteemed highly at a distance. 
Thirdly, that a circle of clever fellows, who meet 
together to dine and have a good time, have signed 
a constitutional compact to glorify themselves and to 
put down him and the fraction of the human race 
not belonging to their number. Fourthly, that it is 
an outrage that he is not asked to join them. 

Here the company laughed a good deal, and the 
old gentleman who sits opposite said : " That 's it I 
that 's it ! " 

I continued, for I was in the talking vein. As to 
clever people's hating each other, I think a little 
extra talent does sometimes make people jealous. 
They become irritated by perpetual attempts and 
failures, and it hurts their tempers and dispositions. 
Unpretending mediocrity is good, and genius is 
glorious; but a weak flavor of genius in an essen- 
tially common person is detestable. It spoils the 
grand neutrality of a commonplace character, as the 
rinsings of an unwashed wine-glass spoil a draught 
of fair water. No wonder the poor fellow we spoke 
of, who always belongs to this class of slightly 



4 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

flavored mediocrities, is puzzled and vexed by the 
strange sight of a dozen men of capacity working 
and playing together in harmony. He and his fel- 
lows are always fighting. With them familiarity 
naturally breeds contempt. If they ever praise each 
other's bad drawings, or broken-winded novels, or 
spavined verses, nobody ever supposed it was from 
admiration ; it was simply a contract between them- 
selves and a publisher or dealer. 

If the Mutuals have really nothing among them 
worth admiring, that alters the question. But if they 
are men with noble powers and qualities, let me tell 
you that, next to youthful love and family affections, 
there is no human sentiment better than that which 
unites the Societies of Mutual Admiration. And 
what would literature or art be without such associa- 
tions? Who can tell what we owe to the Mutual 
Admiration Society of which Shakespeare, and Ben 
Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher were members? 
Or to that of which Addison and Steele formed the 
centre, and which gave us * the Spectator ? Or to 
that where Johnson, and Goldsmith, and Burke, and 
Eeynolds, and Beauclerk, and Boswell, most admir- 
ing among aU admirers, met together? Was there 
any great harm in the fact that the Irvings and 
Paulding wrote in company? or any unpardonable 
cabal in the literary union of Verplanck and Bryant 
and Sands, and as many more as they chose to asso- 
ciate with them ? 

The poor creature does not know what he is talk- 
ing about when he abuses this noblest of institutions. 
Let him inspect its mysteries through the knot-hole 
he has secured, but not use that orifice as a medium 
for his popgun. Such a society is the crown of a 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 5 

literary metropolis; if a town has not material for 
it, and spirit and good feeling enough to organize it, 
it is a mere caravansary, fit for a man of genius to 
lodge in, but not to live in. Foolish people hate and 
dread and envy such an association of men of varied 
powers and influence, because it is lofty, serene, im- 
pregnable, and, by the necessity of the case, exclusive. 
Wise ones are prouder of the title M. S. M. A. than 
of all their other honors put together. 

— All generous minds have a horror of what are 
commonly called " facts." They are the brute beasts 
of the intellectual domain. Who does not know 
fellows that always have an ill-conditioned fact or 
two which they lead after them into decent company 
like so many bull-dogs, ready to let them slip at 
every ingenious suggestion, or convenient generaliza- 
tion, or pleasant fancy ? I allow no " facts " at this 
table. What ! Because bread is good and whole- 
some, and necessary and nourishing, shall you thrust 
a crumb into my windpipe while I am talking ? Do 
not these muscles of mine represent a hundred loaves 
of bread ? and is not my thought the abstract of ten 
thousand of these crumbs of truth with which you 
would choke off my speech ? 

[The above remark must be conditioned and quali- 
fied for the vulgar mind. The reader will, of course, 
understand the precise amount of seasoning which 
must be added to it before he adopts it as one of 
the axioms of his life. The speaker disclaims all 
responsibility for its abuse in incompetent hands.] 

This business of conversation is a very serious 
matter. There are men whom it weakens one to talk 
with an hour more than a day's fasting woidd do. 
Mark tliis which I am going to say, for it is as good 



6 THE AUTOCKAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

as a working professional man's advice, and costs you 
nothing: It is better to lose a pint of blood from 
your veins than to have a nerve tapped. Nobody 
measures your nervous force as it runs away, nor 
bandages your brain and marrow after the operation. 

There are men of esprit who are excessively ex- 
hausting to some people. They are the talkers who 
have what may be called jerhy minds. Their 
thoughts do not run in the natural order of sequence. 
They say bright things on all possible subjects, but 
their zigzags rack you to death. After a jolting half- 
hour with one of these jerky companions, talking with 
a dull friend affords great relief. It is like taking 
the cat in your lap after holding a squirrel. 

What a comfort a dull but kindly person is, to be 
sure, at times! A ground-glass shade over a gas- 
lamp does not bring more solace to our dazzled eyes 
than such a one to our minds. 

"Do not dull people bore you?" said one of the 
lady-boarders, — the same who sent me her autograph- 
book last week with a request for a few original 
stanzas, not remembering that " The Pactolian " pays 
me ^Ye dollars a line for every thing I write in its 
columns. 

"Madam," said I (she and the century were in 
their teens together), " aU men are bores, except when 
we want them. There never was but one man whom 
I would trust with my latch-key." 

" Who might that favored person be ? " 

" Zimmermann." " 

— The men of genius that I fancy most, have 

" The " Treatise on Solitude''^ is not so frequently seen lying 
about on library tables as in our younger days. I remembei 
that I always respected the title and let the book alone. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. / 

erectile heads like the cobra-di-capello. You remem- 
ber what they tell of William Pinkney, the great 
pleader ; how in his eloquent paroxysms the veins of 
his neck would swell and his face flush and his eyes 
glitter, until he seemed on the verge of apoplexy. 
The hydraulic arrangements for supplying the brain 
with blood are only second in importance to its own 
organization. The bulbous-headed fellows who steam 
well when they are at work are the men that draw 
big audiences and give us marrowy books and pic- 
tures. It is a good sign to have one's feet grow cold 
when he is writing. A great writer and speaker 
once told me that he often wrote with his feet in hot 
water ; but for this, all his blood would have run into 
his head, as the mercury sometimes withdraws into 
the ball of a thermometer. 

— You don't suppose that my remarks made at this 
table are like so many postage-stamps, do you, — each 
to be only once uttered? If you do, you are mis- 
taken. He must be a poor creature who does not 
often repeat himself. Imagine the author of the ex- 
cellent piece of advice, "Know thyself," never allud- 
ing to that sentiment again during the course of a 
protracted existence ! Why, the truths a man carries 
about with him are his tools ; and do you think a car- 
penter is bound to use the same plane but once to 
smooth a knotty board with, or to hang up his ham- 
mer after it has driven its first nail? I shall never 
repeat a conversation, but an idea often. I shall use 
the same types when I like, but not commonly the 
same stereotypes. A thought is often original, though 
you have uttered it a hundred times. It has come to 
you over a new route, by a new and express train of 
associations. 



8 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Sometimes, but rarely, one may be caught making 
the same speech twice over, and yet be held blame- 
less. Thus, a certain lecturer, after performing in an 
inland city, where dwells a Litteratrice of note, was 
invited to meet her and others over the social teacup. 
She pleasantly referred to his many wanderings in his 
new occupation. " Yes," he replied, " I am like the 
Huma,"* the bird that never lights, being always in the 
cars, as he is always on the wing." — Years elapsed. 
The lecturer visited the same place once more for the 
same purpose. Another social cup after the lecture, 
and a second meeting with the distinguished lady. 
"You are constantly going from place to place," she 
said. — " Yes," he answered, " I am like the Huma," 
— and finished the sentence as before. 

What horrors, when it flashed over him that he had 
made this fine speech, word for word, twice over! 
Yet it was not true, as the lady might perhaps have 
fairly inferred, that he had embellished his conversa- 
tion with the Huma daily during that whole interval of 
years. On the contrary, he had never once thought of 
the odious fowl until the recurrence of precisely the 
same circumstances brought up precisely the same 
idea. He ought to have been proud of the accuracy 
of his mental adjustments. Given certain factors, and 
a sound brain should always evolve the same fixed 
product with the certainty of Babbage's calculating 
machine. 

" It was an a(!;reeable incident of two consecutive visits to 
Hartford, Conn., that I met there the late Mrs. Sigourney. The 
second meeting recalled the first, and with it the allusion to the 
Huma, which bird is the subject of a short poem by another 
New England authoress, which may be found in Mr. Griswold's 
collection. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 9 

— What a satire, by the way, is that machine on 
the mere mathematician ! A Frankenstein-monster, a 
thing without brains and without heart, too stupid to 
make a blunder ; which turns out results like a com- 
sheller, and never grows any wiser or better, though it 
grind a thousand bushels of them ! 

I have an immense respect for a man of talents plus 
" the mathematics." But the calculating power alone 
should seem to be the least human of qualities, and to 
have the smallest amount of reason in it ; since a 
machine can be made to do the work of three or four 
calculators, and better than any one of them. Some- 
times I have been troubled that I had not a deeper in- 
tuitive apprehension of the relations of numbers. But 
the triumph of the ciphering hand-organ has consoled 
me. I always fancy I can hear the wheels clicking in 
a calculator's brain. The power of dealing with num- 
bers is a kind of " detached lever " arrangement, which 
may be put into a mighty poor watch. I suppose it is 
about as common as the power of moving the ears vol- 
untarily, which is a moderately rare endowment. 

— Little localized powers, and little narrow streaks 
of specialized knowledge, are things men are very apt 
to be conceited about. Nature is very wise ; but for 
this encouraging principle how many small talents 
and little accomplishments would be neglected ! Talk 
about conceit as much as you like, it is to human 
character what salt is to the ocean ; it keeps it sweet, 
and renders it endurable. Say rather it is like the 
natural unguent of the sea-fowl's plumage, which ena- 
bles him to shed the rain that falls on him and the 
wave in which he dips. When one has had all his 
conceit taken out of him, when he has lost all his illu- 
sions, his feathers vn\[ soon soak through, and he will 
fly no more. 



10 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

"So you admire conceited people, do you?" said 
the young lady who has come to the city to be finished 
off for — the duties of life. 

I am afraid you do not study logic at your school, 
my dear. It does not follow that I wish to be pickled 
in brine because I like a salt-water plunge at Nahant, 
I say that conceit is just as natural a thing to human 
minds as a centre is to a circle. But little-minded 
people's thoughts move in such small circles that five 
minutes' conversation gives you an arc long enough to 
determine their whole curve. An arc in the move- 
ment of a large intellect does not sensibly differ from 
a straig-ht line. Even if it have the third vowel as 
its centre, it does not soon betray it. The highest 
thought, that is, is the most seemingly impersonal ; it 
does not obviously imply any individual centre. 

Audacious self-esteem, with good ground for it, is 
always imposing. What resplendent beauty that 
must have been which could have authorized Phryne 
to " peel " in the way she did ! What fine speeches 
are those two : " No7i omnis moriar^^'' and " I have 
taken all knowledge to be my province " ! Even in 
common people, conceit has the virtue of making them 
cheerful ; the man who thinks his wife, his baby, his 
house, his horse, his dog, and himself severally une- 
qualled, is almost sure to be a good-humored person, 
though liable to be tedious at times. 

— What are the great faults of conversation ? 
Want of ideas, want of words, want of manners, are 
the principal ones, I suppose you think. I don't 
doubt it, but I will tell you what I have found spoil 
more good talks than anything else ; — long argu- 
ments on special points between people who differ on 
the fundamental principles upon which these points 



THE AUTOCRAT OP THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 11 

depend. No men can liave satisfactory relations with 
each other until they have agreed on certain ultimata 
of belief not to be disturbed in ordinary conversation, 
and unless they have sense enough to trace the second- 
ary questions depending upon these ultimate beliefs to 
their source. In short, just as a written constitution 
is essential to the best social order, so a code of final- 
ities is a necessary condition of profitable talli between 
two persons. Talking is like playing on the harp; 
there is as much in laying the hand on the strings to 
stop their vibrations as in twanging them to bring out 
their music. 

— Do you mean to say the pun-question is not 
clearly settled in your minds ? Let me lay down the 
law upon the subject. Life and language are alike 
sacred. Homicide and verbicide — that is, violent 
treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate 
meaning, v/hicli is its life — are alike forbidden. 
Manslaughter, which is the meaning of the one, is the 
same as man's laughter, which is the end of the other. 
A pun is 2orimd facie an insult to the person you are 
talking with. It implies utter indifference to or sub- 
lime contempt for his remarks, no matter how serious. 
I speak of total depravity, and one says all that is 
written on the subject is deep raving. I have commit- 
ted my self-respect by talking with such a person. I 
should like to commit him, but cannot, because he is a 
nuisance. Or I speak of geological convulsions, and 
he asks me what was the cosine of Noah's ark ; also, 
whether the Deluge was not a deal huger than any 
modern inundation. 

A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. 
But if a blow were given for such cause, and death 
ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts raid 



12 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

of the pnn, and might, if the latter were of an aggra- 
vated character, return a verdict of justifiable homi- 
cide. Thus, in a case lately decided before Miller, J., 
Doe presented Roe a subscription paper, and urged 
the claims of suffering humanity. Roe replied by 
asking, When charity was like a top ? It was in evi- 
dence that Doe preserved a dignified silence. Roe 
then said, "When it begins to hum." Doe then — 
and not till then — struck Roe, and his head happen- 
ing to hit a bound vohune of the Monthly Rag-Bag 
and Stolen Miscellany, intense mortification ensued, 
with a fatal result. The chief laid down his notions 
of the law to his brother justices, who unanimously 
replied, " Jest so." The chief rejoined, that no man 
should jest so without being punished for it, and 
charged for the prisoner, who was acquitted, and the 
pun ordered to be burned by the sheriff. The bound 
volume was forfeited as a deodand, but not claimed. 

People that make puns are like wanton boys that 
put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse 
themselves and other children, but their little trick 
may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake 
of a battered witticism. 

I will thank you, B. F., to bring down two books, 
of which I will mark the places on this slip of paper. 
(While he is gone, I may say that this boy, our land- 
lady's youngest, is called Benjamin Franklin, after 
the celebrated philosopher of that name. A highly 
merited compliment.) 

I wished to refer to two eminent authorities. Now 
be so good as to listen. The great moralist says : "To 
trifle with the vocabulary which is the vehicle of so- 
cial intercourse is to tamper Avith the currency of 
human intellio-ence. He who would violate the sane 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 13 

titles of his mother tongue would invade the recesses 
of the paternal till without remorse, and repeat the 
banquet of Saturn without an indigestion." 

And, once more, listen to the historian. "The Pu^^ 
ritans hated puns. The Bishops were notoriously ad 
dieted to them. The Lords Temporal carried them 
to the verge of license. Majesty itself must have its 
Royal quibble. ' Ye be burly, my Lord of Burleigh,^ 
said Queen Elizabeth, ' but ye shall make less stir in 
our realm than my Lord of Leicester.' The gravest 
wisdom and the highest breeding lent their sanction 
to the practice. Lord Bacon playfully declared him- 
self a descendant of 'Og, the King of Bashan. Sir 
Philip Sidney, with his last breath, reproached the 
soldier who brought him water, for wasting a casque 
full upon a dying man. A courtier, who saw Othello 
performed at the Globe Theatre, remarked, that the 
blackamoor was a brute, and not a man. ' Thou hast 
reason,' replied a great Lord, ' according to Plato his 
saying ; for this be a two-legged animal with feath- 
ers.' The fatal habit became universal. The lan- 
guage was corrupted. The infection spread to the 
national conscience. Political double-dealings natu- 
rally grew out of verbal double meanings. The teeth 
of the new dragon were sown by the Cadmus who in- 
troduced the alphabet of equivocation. What was 
levity in the time of the Tudors grew to regicide and 
revolution in the age of the Stuarts." 

Who was that boarder that just whispered some- 
thing about the Macaulay-flowers of literature ? — 
There was a dead silence. — I said calmly, I shall 
henceforth consider any interruption by a pun as a 
hint to change my boarding-house. Do not plead my 
example. If / have used any such, it has been only 



14 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

as a Spartan father would sliow up a drunken lielot 
We have done with them. 

— If a logical mind ever found out anything with 
its logic ? — I should say that its most frequent work 
was to build a pons asinorum over chasms which 
shrewd people can bestride without such a structure. 
You can hire logic, in the shape of a lawyer, to prove 
anything that you want to prove. You can buy trea^ 
tises to show that Napoleon never lived, and that no 
battle of Bunker-hill was ever fought. The great 
minds are those with a wide span," which couple 
truths related to, but far removed from, each other. 
Logicians carry the surveyor's chain over the track of 
which these are the true explorers. I value a man 
mainly for his primary relations with truth, as I un- 
derstand truth, — not for any secondary artifice in 
handling his ideas. Some of the sharpest men in ar- 
gument are notoriously unsound in judgment. I 
should not trust the counsel of a clever debater, any 
more than that of a good chess-player. Either may 
of course advise wisely, but not necessarily because he 
wrangles or plays well. 

The old gentleman who sits opposite got his hand 
up, as a pointer lifts his forefoot, at the expression, 
*' his relations with truth, as I understand truth," and 
when I had done, sniffed audibly, and said I talked 
like a transcendentalist. For his part, common sense 
was good enough for him. 

Precisely so, my dear sir, I replied ; common sense, 
as you understand it. We all have to assume a 
standard of judgment in our own minds, either of 
things or persons. A man who is willing to take 

" There is something like this in J. H. Newman's Grammar oj 
Assent. See Characteristics, ariMnnred by W. S, Lilly, p. 81. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 15 

another's opinion has to exercise his judgment in the 
choice of whom to follow, which is often as nice a 
matter as to judge of things for one's seK. On the 
whole, I had rather judge men's minds by comparing 
their thoughts with my own, than judge of thoughts 
by knowing who utter them. I must do one or the 
other. It does not follow, of course, that I may not 
recognize another man's thoughts as broader and 
deeper than my own ; but that does not necessarily 
change my opinion, otherwise this would be at the 
mercy of every superior mind that held a different 
one. How many of our most cherished beliefs are 
like those drinking-giasses of the ancient pattern, that 
serve us well so long as we keep them in our hand, 
but spill all if we attempt to set them down ! I have 
sometimes compared conversation to the Italian game 
of morct^ in which one player lifts his hand with so 
many fingers extended, and the other gives the num- 
ber if he can. I show my thought, another his 5 if 
they agree, well ; if they differ, we find the largest 
common factor, if we can, but at any rate avoid dis- 
puting about remainders and fractions, which is to 
real talk what tuning an instrument is to playing 
on it. 

— WLat if, instead of talking this morning, I 
should read you a copy of verses, with critical re- 
marks by the author ? Any of the company can re 
tire that Hke. 

ALBUM VERSES. 

"When Eve had led her lord away, 

And Cain had killed his brother, 
The stars and flowers, the poets say, 

Ao;reed with one another 



16 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 

To cheat the cunning tempter's art, 

And teach the race its duty, 
By keeping on its wicked heart 

Their eyes of light and beauty. 

A million sleepless lids, they say, 

Will be at least a warning; 
And so the flowers would watch by day, 

The stars from eve to morning. 

On hill and prairie, field and lawn, 

Their dewy eyes upturning, 
The flowers still watch from reddening dawn 

Till western skies are burning. 

Alas! each hour of daylight tells 

A tale of shame so crushing, 
That some turn white as sea-bleached shells, 

And some are always blushing. 

But when the patient stars look down 

On all their light discovers, 
The traitor's smile, the murderer's frown, 

The lips of lying lovers, 

They try to shut their saddening eyes. 

And in the vain endeavor 
We see them twinkling in the skies, 

And so they wink forever. 

What do you think of these verses, my friends ? — 
Is that piece an impromptu ? said my landlady's 
daughter. (Aet. 19 -|-. Tender-eyed blonde. Long 
ringlets. Cameo pin. Gold pencil-case on a chain. 
Locket. Bracelet. Album. Autograph book. Ac- 
cordeon. Eeads Byron, Tupper, and Sylvanus Cobb, 
Junior, while her mother makes the puddings. Says 
" Yes ? " when you tell her anything.) — Qui et non^ 
ma petite^ — Yes and no, my child. Five of the seven 



THE AUTOCKAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 17 

verses were written off-hand; the other two took a 
week, — that is, were hanging round the desk in a 
ragged, forlorn, unrhymed condition as long as that. 
All poets will tell you just such stories. C'est le 
DERNIER pas qui coute. Don't you know how hard it 
is for some people to get out of a room after their 
visit is really over? They want to be off, and you 
want to have them off, but they don't know how to 
manage it. One would think they had been built in 
your parlor or study, and were waiting to be launched. 
I have contrived a sort of ceremonial inclined plane 
for such visitors, which being lubricated with certain 
smooth phrases, I back them down, metaphorically 
speaking, stern-foremost, into their " native element," 
the great ocean of out-doors. Well, now, there are 
poems as hard to get rid of as these rural visitors. 
They come in glibly, use up all the serviceable 
rhymes, day^ ray^ beauty, duty, skies, eyes, otlier^ 
brother^ mountain, fountain, and the like; and so 
they go on until you think it is time for the wind-up, 
and the wind-up won't come on any terms. So they 
lie about until you get sick of the sight of them, and 
end by thrusting some cold scrap of a final couplet 
upon them, and turning them out of doors. I suspect 
a good many "impromptus" could tell just such a 
story as the above. — Here turning to our landlady, I 
used an illustration which pleased the company much 
at the time, and has since been highly commended. 
" Madam," I said, " you can pour three gills and three 
.quarters of honey from that pint jug, if it is full, in 
less than one minute ; but. Madam, you could not 
empty that last quarter of a gill, though you were 
turned into a marble Hebe, and held the vessel upside 
down for a thousand years." 



18 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

One gets tired to death of the old, old rhymes, such 
as you see in that copy of verses, — wliich I don't 
mean to abuse, or to praise either. I always feel as if 
I were a cobbler, putting new top-leathers to an old 
pair of boot-soles and bodies, when I am fitting senti- 
ments to these venerable jingles. 

youth 

morning 

truth 

warning. 

Nine tenths of the "Juvenile Poems" written 
spring out of the above musical and suggestive coinci- 
dences. 

''Yes?" said our landlady's daughter. 

I did not address the following remark to her, and 
I trust, from her limited range of reading, she will 
never see it ; I said it softly to my next neighbor. 

When a young female wears a flat circular side- 
curl, gummed on each temple, — when she walks with 
a male, not arm in arm, but his arm against the back 
of hers, — and when she says " Yes ? " with the note 
of interrogation, you are generally safe in asking her 
what wages she gets, and who the " feller " was you 
saw her with. 

" What were you whispering ? " said the daughter 
of the house, moistening her lips, as she spoke, in a 
very engaging manner. 

" I was only laying down a principle of social diag- 
nosis." 

"Yes?" 

— It is curious to see how the same wants and 
tastes find the same implements and modes of expres- 
sion in all times and places. The young ladies of Ota- 
heite, as you may see in Cook's Voyages, had a sort 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 19 

of crinoline arrangement fully equal in radius to the 
largest spread of our own lady-baskets. When I 
fling a Bay-State shawl over my shoulders, I am only 
taking a lesson from the climate which the Indian had 
learned before me. A hlanhet-^hsiwl we call it, and 
not a plaid ; and we wear it like the aborigines, anc^ 
not like the Highlanders. 

— We are the Romans of the modern world, — - the 
great assimilating people. Conflicts and conquests 
are of course necessary accidents with us, as with our 
prototypes. And so we come to their style of weapon. 
Our army sword is the short, stiff, pointed gladius of 
the Romans; and the American bowie-knife is the 
same tool, modified to meet the daily wants of civil so- 
ciety. I announce at this table an axiom not to be 
found in Montesquieu or the journals of Congress : — 

The race that shortens its weapons lengthens its 
boundaries. 

Corollary, It was the Polish lance that left Po- 
land at last with nothing of her own to bound. 

'' Dropped from her nerveless grasp the shattered spear ! " 

What business had Sarmatia to be fighting for lib- 
erty with a fifteen-foot pole between her and the 
breasts of her enemies ? If she had but clutched the 
old Roman and young American weapon, and come to 
close quarters, there might have been a chance for 
her; but it would have spoiled the best passage in 
" The Pleasures of Hope." 

— Self-made men? — Well, yes. Of course every 
body likes and respects self-made men. It is a great 
deal better to be made in that way than not to be 
made at all. Are any of you younger j)eople old 
enough to remember that irishman's house on tlie 



20 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

marsh at Cambridgeport, whicli house he built from 
drain to chimney-top with his own hands? It took 
him a good many years to build it, and one could see 
that it was a little out of plumb, and a little wavy in 
outline, and a little queer and uncertain in general 
aspect. A regular hand could certainly have built 8 
better house; but it was a very good house for a 
" seK-made " carpenter's house, and people praised itj 
and said how remarkably well the Irishman had suc- 
ceeded. They never thought of praising the fine 
blocks of houses a little farther on. 

Your self-made man, whittled into shape with his 
own jack-knife, deserves more credit, if that is all, 
than the regular engine-turned article, shaped by the 
most approved pattern, and French-polished by soci- 
ety and travel. But as to saying that one is every 
way the equal of the other, that is another matter. 
The right of strict social discrimination of all things 
and persons, according to their merits, native or ac- 
quired, is one of the most precious republican privi- 
leges. I take the liberty to exercise it when I say 
that, other things being equals in most relations of 
life I prefer a man of family. 

What do I mean by a man of family ? — O, I 'U 
give you a general idea of what I mean. Let us give 
him a first-rate fit out ; it costs us nothing. 

Four or five generations of gentlemen and gentle- 
women ; among them a member of his Majesty's 
Council for the Province, a Governor or so, one or 
two Doctors of Divinity, a member of Congress, not 
later than the time of long boots with tassels. 

Family portraits." The member of the Council, by 

" The full-length pictures by Copley I was thinking of are 
Buch as may be seen in the Memorial Hall of Harvard Univer- 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 21 

Smibert. The great merchant-uncle, by Copley, full 
length, sitting in his arm chair, in a velvet cap and 
flowered robe, with a globe by him, to show the range 
of his commercial transactions, and letters with large 
red seals lying round, one directed conspicuously to 
The Honorable, etc., etc. Great-grandmother, by the 

sity, but many are to be met with in different parts of New Eng- 
land, sometimes in the possession of the poor descendants of the 
rich gentlefolks in lace ruffles and glistening satins, grandees 
and grand dames of the ante-Revolutionary period. I remember 
one poor old gentleman who had nothing left of his family pos- 
sessions but the full-length portraits of his ancestors, the Coun- 
sellor and his lady, saying, with a gleam of the pleasantry which 
had come down from the days of Mather Byles, and " Balch 
the Hatter," and Sigourney, that he fared not so badly after 
all, for he had a pair of canvas-backs every day through the 
whole year. 

The mention of these names, all of which are mere traditions 
to myself and my contemporaries, reminds me of the long suc- 
cession of wits and humorists whose companionship has been the 
delight of their generation, and who leave nothing on record by 
which they will be remembered ; Yoricks who set the table in 
a roar, story-tellers who gave us scenes of life in monologue 
better than the stilted presentments of the stage, and those al- 
ways welcome friends with social interior furnishings, whose 
smile provoked the wit of others and whose rich, musical laugh- 
ter was its abundant reward. Who among us in my earlier 
days ever told a story or carolled a rippling chanson so gayly, 
so easily, so charmingly as John Sullivan, whose memory is like 
the breath of a long bygone summer? Mr. Arthur Oilman has 
left his monument in the stately structures he planned; Mr. 
James T. Fields in the pleasant volumes full of precious recol- 
lections; but twenty or thirty years from now old men will tell 
their boys that the Yankee story-teller died with the first, and 
that the chief of our literary reminiscents, whose ideal portrait 
gallery reached from Wordsworth to Swinburne, left us when 
the second bowed his head and "fell on sleep," no longer to de- 
light the guests whom his hospitality gathered around him witll 
the pictures to which his lips gave life and action. 



22 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

same artist ; brown satin, lace very fine, hands super- 
lative ; grand old lady, stiffish, but imposing. Her 
mother, artist unknown ; flat, angular, hanging 
sleeves ; parrot on fist. A pair of Stuarts, viz., 1. A 
superb, full-blown, mediaeval gentleman, with a fiery 
dash of Tory blood in his veins, tempered down witb 
that of a fine old rebel grandmother, and warmed up 
with the best of old India Madeira ; his face is one 
flame of ruddy sunshine ; his rufEed shirt rushes out 
of his bosom with an impetuous generosity, as if it 
would drag his heart after it ; and his smile is good 
for twenty thousand dollars to the Hospital, besides 
ample bequests to all relatives and dependants. 2. 
Lady of the same ; remarkable cap ; high waist, as in 
time of Empire ; bust a la Josephine ; wisps of curls, 
like celery-tips, at sides of forehead ; complexion clear 
and warm, like rose-cordial. As for the miniatures 
by Malbone, we don't count them in the gallery. 

Books, too, with the names of old college-students 
in them, — family names ; — you will find them at the 
head of their respective classes in the days when stu- 
dents took rank on the catalogue from their parents' 
condition. Elzevirs, with the Latinized appellations 
of youthful progenitors, and Hie liber est mens on the 
title-page. A set of Hogarth's original plates. Pope, 
original edition, 15 volumes, London, 1717. Barrow 
on the lower shelves, in folio. Tillotson on the upper, 
In a little dark platoon of octo-decimos. 

Some family silver ; a string of wedding and funeral 
rings ; the arms of the family curiously blazoned ; the 
same in worsted, by a maiden aunt. 

If the man of family has an old place to keep 
these things in, furnished with claw-footed chairs and 
black mahogany tables, and tall bevel-edged mirrors, 
and stately upright cabinets, his outfit is complete. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 23 

No, my friends, I go (always, other things being 
equal) for the man who inherits family traditions and 
the cumulative humanities of at least four or five gen- 
erations. Above all things, as a child, he should have 
tumbled about in a library. All men are afraid of 
books, who have not handled them from infancy. Do 
you suppose our dear didascalos " over there ever read 
I^oli Synopsis, or consulted Castelli Lexicon, while 
he was growing up to their stature ? Not he ; but 
virtue passed through the hem of their parchment and 
leather garments whenever he touched them, as the 
precious drugs sweated through the bat's handle in 
the Arabian story. I tell you he is at home wherever 
he smells the invigorating fragrance of Russia leather. 
No self-made man feels so. One may, it is true, have 
all the antecedents I have spoken of, and yet be a 
boor or a shabby fellow. One may have none of them, 
and yet be fit for councils and courts. Then let them 
change places. Our social arrangement has this great 
beauty, that its strata shift up and down as they 
change specific gravity, without being clogged by lay- 
ers of prescription. But I still insist on my demo- 
cratic liberty of choice, and I go for the man with the 
gallery of family portraits against the one with the 
twenty-five-cent daguerreotype, unless I find out that 
the last is the better of the two. 

""Our dear didascalos'^ was meant for Professor James 
Hussell Lowell, now Minister to England. It requires the 
union of exceptional native gifts and generations of training to 
bring the " natural ma-n " of New England to the completeness 
of scholarly manhood, such as that which adds new distinction 
to the name he bears, already remarkable for its successive gen- 
erations of eminent citizens. 

"Self-made" is imperfectly made, or education is a super- 
fiuity and a failure. 



24 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

— I should have felt more nervous about the late 
comet, if I had thought the world was ripe. But it is 
very green yet, if I am not mistaken ; and besides, 
there is a great deal of coal to use up, which I cannot 
bring myseK to think was made for nothing. If cer- 
tain things, which seem to me essential to a millen- 
nium, had come to pass, I shoidd have been fright- 
ened ; but they have n't. Perhaps you would like to 
hear my 

LATTER-DAY WARNINGS. 

When legislators keep the law, 

When banks dispense with bolts and locks, 

When berries, whortle — rasp — and straw — 
Grow bigger downwards through the box, — 

When he that selleth house or land 
Shows leak in roof or flaw in right, — 

When haberdashers choose the stand 

Whose window hath the broadest light, — 

When preachers tell us all they think, 

And party leaders all they mean, — 
When what we pay for, that we drink, 

From real grape and coffee-bean, — 

When lawyers take what they would give, 
And doctors give what they would take, — 

When city fathers eat to live, 

Save when they fast for conscience' sake,— 

When one that hath a horse on sale 

Shall bring his merit to the proof, 
Without a lie for every nail 

That holds the iron on the hoof, — 

When in the usual place for rips 

Our gloves are stitched with special care, 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 25 

And guarded well the whalebone tips 
Where first umbrellas need repah-, — 

When Cuba's weeds have quite forgot 

The power of suction to resist. 
And claret-bottles harbor not 

Such dimples as would hold your fist, — 

When publishers no longer steal, 

And pay for what they stole before, — 

When the first locomotive's wheel 

Rolls through the Hoosac tunnel's bore ; * — 

Till then let Gumming blaze away. 
And Miller's saints blow up the globe ; 

But when you see that blessed day, 
Then order your ascension robe! 

The company seemed to like the verses, and I prom- 
ised them to read others occasionally, if they had a 
mind to hear them. Of course they would not expect 
it every morning. Neither must the reader suppose 
that all these things I have reported were said at any 
one breakfast-time. I have not taken the trouble to 
date them, as Raspail, ^eVe, used to date every proof 
he sent to the printer ; but they were scattered over 
several breakfasts ; and I have said a good many 
more things since, which I shall very possibly print 
some time or other, if I am uiged to do it by judicious 
friends. 

" This hoped for, but almost despaired of, event, occurred on 
the 9th of February, 1875. The writer of the above lines was 
as much pleased as his fellow-citizens at the termination of an 
enterprise which gave constant occasion for the most inveterate 
pun on record. When the other conditions referred to are as 
happily fulfilled as this has been, he will still say as before, 
that it is time for the ascension garment to be ordered. 



26 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABI.E. 

I finished off with reading some verses of my friend 
the Professor, of whom you may perhaps hear more 
by and by. The Professor read them, he told me, at 
a farewell meeting, where the youngest of our great 
historians " met a few of his many friends at their in- 
vitation. 

Yes, we knew we must lose him, — though friendship may 

claim 
To blend her green leaves with the laurels of fame ; 
Though fondly, at parting, we call him our own, 
'T is the whisper of love when the bugle has blown. 

As the rider who rests with the spur on his heel, — 
As the guardsman who sleeps in his corselet of steel, — 
As the archer who stands with his shaft on the string, 
He stoops from his toil to the garland we bring. 

What pictures yet slumber unborn in his loom 

Till their warriors shall breathe and their beauties shall bloom, 

While the tapestry lengthens the life-glowing dyes 

That caught from our sunsets the stain of their skies! 

In the alcoves of death, in the charnels of time, 
Where flit the gaunt spectres of passion and crime. 
There are triumphs untold, there are martyrs unsung, 
There are heroes yet silent to speak with his tongue! 

Let us hear the proud story which time has bequeathed 
From lips that are warm with the freedom they breathed ! 
Let him summon its tyrants, and tell us their doom. 
Though he sweep the black past like Van Tromp with his broom! 



" " The youngest of our great historians," referred to in the 
poem, was John Lothrop Motley. His career of authorship was 
as successful as it was noble, and his works are among the chief 
ornaments of our national literature. Are Republics still un« 
grateful, as of old ? 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. ^I 

The dream flashes by, for the west-winds awake 
On pampas, on prairie, o'er mountain and lake. 
To bathe the swift bark, like a sea-girdled shrine, 
With incense they stole from the rose and the pine. 

So fill a bright cup with the sunlight that gushed 

When the dead summer's jewels were trampled and crushed : 

The True Knight of Learning, — the world holds him 

dear, — 
Love bless him, Joy crown him, God speed his career I 



n. 

I REALLY believe some people save their bright 
thoughts as being too precious for conversation. 
What do you think an admiring friend said the other 
day to one that was talking good things, — good 
enough to print? " Why," said he, "you are wasting 
merchantable literature, a cash article, at the rate, as 
nearly as I can tell, of fifty dollars an hour." The 
talker took him to the window and asked him to look 
out and tell what he saw. 

"Nothing but a very dusty street," he said, "and a 
man driving a sprinkling-machine through it." 

" Why don't you tell the man he is wasting that 
water ? What w ould be the state of the highways of 
life, if v/e did not drive our thought-sprinhlers 
through them with the valves open, sometimes ? 

" Besides, there is another thing about this talking, 
which you forget It shapes our thoughts for us ; — 
the waves of conversation roll them as the surf rolls 
the pebbles on the shore. Let me modify the image 
a little. I rough out my thoughts in talk as an artist 
models in clay. Spoken language is so plastic, — you 



28 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

can pat and coax, and spread and shave, and rub out, 
and fill up, and stick on so easily, when you work that 
soft material, that there is nothing like it for model- 
ling. Out of it come the shapes which you turn into 
marble or bronze in your immortal books, if you hap- 
pen to write such. Or, to use another illustration, 
writing or printing is like shooting with a rifle ; you 
may hit your reader's mind, or miss it ; — but talking 
is like playing at a mark with the pipe of an engine; 
if it is within reach, and you have time enough, you 
can't help hitting it." 

The comj)any agreed that this last illustration was 
of superior excellence, or, in the phrase used by them, 
"Fust-rate." I acknowledged the compliment, but 
gently rebuked the expression. " Fust-rate," " prime," 
" a prime article," " a superior piece of goods," " a 
handsome garment," " a gent in a flowered vest," — 
all such expressions are final. They blast the lineage 
of him or her who utters them, for generations up and 
down. There is one other phrase which will soon 
come to be decisive of a man's social status, if it is 
not already • " That tells the whole story." It is an 
expression which vulgar and conceited people particu- 
larly affect, and which well-meaning ones, who know 
better, catch from them. It is intended to stop all de- 
bate, like the previous question in the General Court. 
Only it does n't ; simply because " that " does not usu- 
ally tell the whole, nor one half of the whole story. 

— It is an odd idea, that almost all our people have 
had a professional education. To become a doctor a 
man must study some three years and hear a thousand 
lectures, more or less. Just how much study it takes 
to make a lawyer I cannot say, but probably not more 
than this. Now, most decent people hear one hundred 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 29 

lectures or sermons (discourses) on theology ever^y 
year, — and this, twenty, thirty, fifty years together. 
They read a great many religious books besides. The 
clergy, however, rarely hear any sermons except what 
they preach themselves. A dull preacher might be 
conceived, therefore, to lapse into a state of quasi 
heathenism, simply for want of religious instruction. 
And, on the other hand, an attentive and intelligent 
hearer, listening to a succession of wise teachers, 
might become actually better educated in theology 
than any one of them. We are all theological stu- 
dents, and more of us qualified as doctors of divinity 
than have received degrees at any of the universities. 

It is not strange, therefore, that very good people 
should often find it difficult, if not impossible, to keep 
their attention fixed upon a sermon treating feebly a 
subject which they have thought vigorously about for 
years, and heard able men discuss scores of times. I 
have often noticed, however, that a hopelessly didl dis- 
course acts inductively, as electricians woidd say, in 
developing strong mental currents. I am ashamed to 
think with what accompaniments and variations and 
flourishes I have sometimes followed the* droning of a 
heavy speaker, — not willingly, — for my habit is rev- 
erential, — but as a necessary result of a slight con- 
tinuous impression on the senses and the mind, which 
kept both in action without furnishing the food they 
required to work upon. If you ever saw a crow with 
a king-bird after him, you will get an image of a duU 
speaker and a lively listener. The bird in sable plum- 
age flaps heavily along his straightforward course, 
while the other sails round him, over him, under him, 
leaves him, comes back again, tweaks out a black 
feather, shoots away once more, never losing sight of 



30 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

him, and finally reaches the crow's perch at the same 
time the crow does, having cut a perfect labyrinth of 
loops and knots and spirals while the slow fowl was 
pamfully working from one end of his straight line to 
the other. 

[I think these remarks were received rather cooUyc 
A temjDorary boarder from the country, consisting of 
a somewhat more than middle-aged female, with a 
parchment forehead and a dry little " f risette " shm- 
gling it, a sallow neck with a necklace of gold beads, 
a black dress too rusty for recent grief, and contours 
in basso-rilievo, left the table prematurely, and was 
reported to have been very virulent about what I said. 
So I went to my good old minister, and repeated the 
remarks, as nearly as I could remember them, to him. 
He laughed good-naturedly, and said there was con- 
siderable truth in them. He thought he could tell 
when people's minds were wandering, by their looks. 
In the earlier years of his ministry he had sometimes 
noticed this, when he was preaching ; — very little of 
late years. Sometimes, when his colleague was preach- 
ing, he observed this kind of inattention ; but after all, 
it was not so very unnatural. I will say, by the way, 
that it is a rule I have long followed, to tell my worst 
thoughts to my minister, and my best thoughts to the 
young people I talk with.] 

— I want to make a literary confession now, which 
I believe nobody has made before me. You know 
very well that I write verses sometimes, because I 
have read some of them at this table. (The company 
assented, — two or three of them in a resigned sort of 
way, as I thought, as if they supposed I had an epic 
in my pocket, and were going to read half a dozen 
books or so for their benefito) — I continued. Of 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 31 

course I write some lines or passages which are better 
than others ; some which, compared with the others, 
might be called relatively excellent. It is in the na- 
ture of things that I should consider these relatively 
excellent lines or passages as absolutely good. So 
much must be pardoned to humanity. Now I never 
wrote a " good " line in my life, but the moment after 
it was written it seemed a hundred years old. Very 
commonly I had a sudden conviction that I had seen 
it somewhere. Possibly I may have sometimes un- 
consciously stolen it, but I do not remember that I 
ever once detected any historical truth in these sudden 
convictions of the antiquity of my new thought or 
phrase. I have learned utterly to distrust them, and 
never allow them to bully me out of a thought or line. 

This is the pliilosophy of it. (Here the number of 
the company was diminished by a small secession.) 
Any new formula which suddenly emerges in our con- 
sciousness has its roots in long trains of thought ; it is 
virtually old when it first makes its appearance among 
the recognized growths of our intellect. Any crystal- 
Vne group of musical words has had a long and still 
period to form in. Here is one theory. 

But there is a larger law which perhaps compre- 
hends these facts. It is this. The rapidity with 
which ideas grow old in our memories is in a direct 
ratio to the squares of their importance. Their ap- 
parent age runs up miraculously, like the value of dia- 
monds, as they increase in magnitude. A great ca- 
lamity, for instance, is as old as the trilobites an hour 
after it has happened. It stains backward through 
all the leaves we have turned over in the book of life, 
before its blot of tears or of blood is dry on the page 
we are turning. For this we seem to have lived; it 



32 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

was foreshadowed iii dreams that we leaped out of in 
the cold sweat of terror ; in the " dissolving views " of 
dark day- visions ; all omens pointed to it ; all paths 
led to it. After the tossing half-forgetfulness of the 
first sleep that follows such an event, it comes upon us 
afresh, as a surprise, at waking ; in a few moments it 
is old again, — old as eternity. 

[I wish I had not said all this then and there. 1 
might have known better. The pale schoolmistress, 
in her mourning dress, was looking at me, as I noticed, 
with a wild sort of expression. All at once the blood 
dropped out of her cheeks as the mercury drops from 
a broken barometer-tube, and she melted away from 
her seat like an image of snow; a slung-shot could 
not have brought her down better. God forgive me ! 

After this little episode, I continued, to some few 
who remained balancing teaspoons on the edges of 
cups, twirling knives, or tilting upon the hind legs of 
their chairs until their heads reached the wall, where 
they left gratuitous advertisements of various popular 
cosmetics.] 

When a person is suddenly thrust into any strange, 
new position of trial, he finds the place fits him as if 
he had been measured for it. He has committed a 
great crime, for instance, and is sent to the State 
Prison. The traditions, prescriptions, lunitations, 
privileges, all the sharp conditions of his new life, 
stamp themselves upon his consciousness as the signet 
on soft wax ; — a single pressure is enough. Let me 
strengthen the image a little. Did you ever happen 
to see that most soft-spoken and velvet-handed steam- 
engine at the Mint ? The smooth piston slides back- 
ward and forward as a lady might slip her delicate 
finger in and out of a ring. The engine lays one of 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 33 

its fingers calmly, but firmly, upon a bit of metal ; it 
is a coin now, and will remember that touch, and tell 
a new race about it, when the date upon it is crusted 
over with twenty centuries. So it is that a great 
silent-moving misery puts a new stamp on us in an 
hour or a moment, — as sharp an impression as if it 
had taken half a lifetime to engrave it. 

It is awful to be in the hands of the wholesale 
professional dealers in misfortune ; undertakers and 
jailers magnetize you in a moment, and you pass out 
of the individual life you were living into the rhyth- 
mical movements of their horrible machinery. Do 
the worst thing you can, or suffer the worst that can 
be thought of, you find yourself in a category of hu- 
manity that stretches back as far as Cain, and with an 
expert at your elbow who has studied your case all 
out beforehand, and is waiting for you with his imple- 
ments of hemp or mahogany. I believe, if a man 
were to be burned in any of our cities to-morrow for 
heresy, there would be found a master of ceremonies 
who knew just how many fagots were necessary, and 
the best way of arranging the whole matter." 

" Accidents are liable to happen if no thoroughly trained ex- 
pert happens to be present. When Catharine Hays was burnt 
at Tyburn, in 1726, the officiating artist scorched his own 
hands, and the whole business was awkwardly managed for 
want of practical familiarity with the process. We have still 
remaining a guide to direct us in one important part of the ar- 
rangements. Bishop Hooper was burned at Gloucester, Eng- 
land, in the year 1555. A few years ago, in making certain 
excavations, the charred stump of the stake to which he was 
bound was discovered. An account of the interesting cere- 
mony, so important in ecclesiastical history — the anjumentum 
ad ignem, with a photograph of the half-burned stick of timber 
was sent me by my friend, Mr. John Bt-llows, of Gloucester, a 
zealous antiquarian, widely known by his wonderful miniature 



M THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

— So we have not won the Goodwood cup ; au con- 
traire, we were a " bad fifth," if not worse than that ; 
and trjdng it again, and the third time, has not yet 
bettered the matter. Now I am as patriotic as any of 
my fellow-citizens, — too patriotic in fact, for I have 
got into hot water by loving too much of my country 
in short, if any man, whose fighting weight is not more 
than eight stone four pounds, disputes it, I am ready 
to discuss the point with him. I should have gloried 
to see the stars and stripes in front at the finish. I 
love my country and I love horses. Stubbs's old mez- 
zotint of Eclipse hangs over my desk, and Herring's 
portrait of Plenipotentiary — whom I saw run at Ep- 
som — over my fireplace. Did I not elope from 
school to see Revenge, and Prospect, and Little John, 
and Peacemaker run over the race-course where now 
yon suburban village flourishes, in the year eighteen 
hundred and ever-so-few ? Though I never owned a 
horse, have I not been the proprietor of six equine fe- 
males, of which one was the prettiest little " Morgin " 
that ever stepped ? Listen, then, to an opinion I have 
often expressed long before this venture of ours in 
England. Horse-raciiig is not a republican institu- 
tion; horse-trotting is. Only very rich persons can 
keep race-horses, and everybody knows they are kept 
mainly as gambling implements. All that matter 
about blood and speed we won't discuss; we under- 
stand all that ; useful, very, — of course, — great ob- 
ligations to the Godolphin " Arabian," and the rest. 
I say racing-horses are essentiall}' gambling imple- 

French dictionary, one of the scholarly printers and publishers 
■who honor the calling of Aldus and the Elzevirs. The stake 
was bip;: enounrh to chain the wliole Bench of Bishops to as fast 
as the Athanasian creed still holds them. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 35 

meiits, as much as roulette tables. Now, I am not 
preaching at this moment ; I may read you one of my 
sermons some other morning ; but I maintain that 
gambling, on the great scale, is not republican. It 
belongs to two phases of society, — a cankered over 
civilization, such as exists in rich aristocracies, and 
the reckless life of borderers and adventurers, or the 
semi-barbarism of a civilization resolved into its prim 
itive elements. Real Republicanism is stern and se- 
vere ; its essence is not in forms of government, but in 
the omnipotence of public opinion which grows out of 
it. This public opinion cannot prevent gambling with 
dice or stocks, but it can and does compel it to keep 
comparatively quiet. But horse-racing is the most 
public way of gambling, and with all its immense at- 
tractions to the sense and the feelings, — to which I 
plead very susceptible, — the disguise is too thin that 
covers it, and everybody knows what it means. Its 
supporters are the Southern gentry, — fine fellows, no 
doubt, but not republicans exactly, as we understand 
the term, — a few Northern millionnaires more or less 
thoroughly millioned, who do not represent the real 
people, and the mob of sporting men, the best of 
whom are commonly idlers, and the worst very bad 
neighbors to have near one in a crowd, or to meet in 
a dark alley. In England, on the other hand, with 
its aristocratic institutions, racing is a natural growth 
enough ; the passion for it spreads downwards through 
all classes, from the Queen to the costermonger. Lon- 
don is like a shelled corn-cob on the Derby day, and 
there is not a clerk who could raise the money to hire 
a saddle with an old hack under it that can sit down 
on his office-stool the next day without wincing. 

Now just compare the racer with the trotter for a 



36 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

moment. The racer is incidentally useful, but essen- 
tially something to bet upon, as much as the thimble- 
rigger's " little joker." The trotter is essentially and 
daily useful, and only incidentally a tool for sporting 
men. 

What better reason do you want for the fact that 
the racer is most cultivated and reaches his greatest 
perfection in England, and that the trotting horses of 
America beat the world ? And why should we have 
expected that the pick — if it was the pick — of our 
few and far-between racing stables should beat the 
pick of England and France ? Throw over the falla- 
cious time-test, and there was nothing to show for it 
but a natural kind of patriotic feeling, which we all 
have, with a thoroughly provincial conceit, which some 
of us must plead guilty to. 

We may beat yet.'^ As an American, I hope we 
shall. As a moralist and occasional sermonizer, I am 
not so anxious about it. Wherever the trotting horse 

" We have beaten in many races in England since tins was 
written, and at last carried off the blue ribbon of the turf at 
Epsom. But up to the present time trotting matches and base- 
ball are distinctively American, as contrasted with running races 
and cricket, which belong, as of right, to England. The won- 
derful effects of breeding and training in a particular direc- 
tion are shown in the records of the trotting horse. In 1844 
Lady Suffolk trotted a mile in 2:26^, which was, I think, the 
fastest time to that date. In 1859 Flora Temple's time at Kal- 
amazoo — I remember Mr. Emerson surprised me once by cor- 
recting my error of a quarter of a second in mentioning it — was 
2:1 9|. Dexter in 1867 brought the figure down to 2:17i. There 
is now a whole class of horses that can trot under 2:20, and in 
1881 Maud S. distanced all previous records with 2:10^. Many 
of our best running horses go to England. Racing in distinc- 
tion from trotting, I think, attracts less attention in this country 
now than in the days of American Eclipse and Henry. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 37 

goes, he carries in his train brisk omnibuses, lively 
bakers' carts, and therefore hot rolls, the jolly butch- 
er's wagon, the cheerful gig, the wholesome afternoon 
drive with wife and child, — all the forms of moral ex- 
cellence, except truth, which does not agree with any 
kind of horse-flesh. The racer brings with him gam- 
bling, cursing, swearing, drinking, and a distaste for 
mob-caps and the middle-aged virtues. 

And by the way, let me beg you not to call a trot- 
ting match a race, and not to speak of a " thorough- 
bred " as a " blooded " horse, unless he has been re- 
cently phlebotomized. I consent to your sajdng 
" blood horse," if you like. Also, if, next year, we 
send out Posterior and Posterioress, the winners of 
the great national four-mile race in 7:18^, and they 
happen to get beaten, pay your bets, and behave like 
men and gentlemen about it, if you know how. 

[I felt a great deal better after blowing off the ill- 
temper condensed in the above paragraph. To brag 
little, — to show well, — to crow gently, if in luck, — 
to pay up, to own up, and to shut up, if beaten, are 
the virtues of a sporting man, and I can't say that I 
think we have shown them in any great perfection of 
late.] 

— Apropos of horses. Do you know how important 
good jockeying is to authors ? Judicious management ; 
lettmg the public see your animal jus* enough, and 
not too much ; holding him up hard whe^ the market 
is too full of him ; letting him out at just the right 
buying intervals ; always gently feeling his mouth ; 
never slacking and never jerking the rein ; — this is 
what I mean by jockeying. 

— When an author has a number of books out a 
cunning hand will keep them all spinning, as Signor 



38 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Blitz does his dinner-plates ; fetching each one up, as 
it begins to " wabble," by an advertisement, a puff, or 
a quotation. 

— Whenever the extracts from a living writer be- 
gin to multiply fast in the papers, without obvious rea- 
son, there is a new book or a new edition coming. The 
extracts are ground-bait. 

— Literary life is full of curious phenomena. I 
don't linow that there is anything more noticeable 
than what we may call conventional reputations. 
There is a tacit understanding in every community 
of men of letters that they will not disturb the popu- 
lar fallacy respecting this or that electro-gilded ce- 
lebrity. There are various reasons for this forbear- 
ance : one is old ; one is rich ; one is good-natured ; 
ona is such a favorite with the pit that it would not be 
safe to hiss him from the manager's box. The vener- 
able augurs of the literary or scientific temple may 
smile faintly when one of the tribe is mentioned ; but 
the farce is in general kept up as well as the Chinese 
comic scene of entreating and imploring a man to stay 
with you, with the implied compact between you that 
he shall by no means think of doing it. A poor 
wretch he must be who would wantonly sit down on 
one of these bandbox reputations. A Prince-Rupert' s- 
drop, which is a tear of unannealed glass, lasts indefi- 
nitely, if you keep it from meddling hands ; but break 
its tail off, and it explodes and resolves itself into pow- 
der. These celebrities I speak of are the Prince-Ku- 
pert's-drops of the learned and polite world. See how 
the papers treat them ! What an array of pleasant 
kaleidoscopic phrases, which can be arranged in ever 
so many charming patterns, is at their service ! How 
kind the " Critical Notices " — where small author- 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE. 39 

ship comes to pick up chips of praise, fragrant, sugary 
and sappy — always are to them ! Well, life would 
be nothing without paper-credit and other fictions ; so 
let them pass current. Don't steal their chips ; don't 
puncture their swimming-bladders ; don't come down 
on their pasteboard boxes ; don't break the ends of 
their brittle and unstable reputations, you fellows who 
all feel sure that your names will be household words 
a thousand years from now. 

" A thousand years is a good while," said the old 
gentleman who sits opposite, thoughtfully. 

— Where have I been for the last three or four 
days? Down at the Island,* deer-shooting. — How 
many did I bag? I brought home one buck shot. — 
The Island is where? No matter. It is the most 
splendid domain that any man looks upon in these 
latitudes. Blue sea around it, and running up into 
its heart, so that the little boat slumbers like a baby 
in lap, while the tall ships are stripping naked to fight 
the hurricane outside, and storm-stay-sails banging 
and flying in ribbons. Trees, in stretches of miles ; 
beeches, oaks, most numerous ; — many of them hung 
with moss, looking like bearded Druids ; some coiled 
in the clasp of huge, dark-stemmed grajDe-vines. Open 
patches where the sun gets in and goes to sleep, and 
the winds come so finely sifted that they are as soft as 
swan's-down. Rocks scattered about, — Stonehenge- 
like monoliths. Fresh-water lakes ; one of them, 
Mary's lake, crystal -clear, full of flashing pickerel 

" The beautiful island referred to is Naushon, the largest of a 
group lying between Buzzard's Bay and the Vineyard Sound, 
south of the main land of Massachusetts. It is the noblest do- 
main in New England, and the present Lord of the Manor is 
worthy of succeeding "the Governor " of blessed memory. 



40 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

lying under the lily-pads like tigers in the jungla 
Six pounds of ditto killed one morning for breakfast. 
^GO fecit. 

The divinity-student looked as if he would like to 
question my Latin. No sir, I said, — you need not 
trouble yourself. There is a higher law in grammar 
not to be put down by Andrews and Stoddard. Then 
I went on. 

Such hospitality as that island has seen there has 
not been the like of in these our New England sov- 
ereignties. There is nothing in the shape of kindness 
and courtesy that can make life beautiful, which has 
not foimd its home in that ocean-principality. It has 
welcomed all who were worthy of welcome, from the 
pale clergyman who came to breathe the sea-air with 
its medicinal salt and iodine, to the great statesman 
who turned his back on the affairs of empire, and 
smoothed his Olympian forehead, and flashed his 
white teeth in merriment over the long table, where 
his wit was the keenest and his story the best. 

[I don't believe any man ever talked like that in 
this world. I don't believe / talked just so ; but the 
fact is, in reporting one's conversation, one cannot 
help Blair-ing it up more or less, ironing out crum- 
pled paragraphs, starching limp ones, and crimping 
and plaiting a little sometimes; it is as natural as 
prinking at the looking-glass.] 

— How can a man help writing poetry in such a 
place ? Everybody does write poetry that goes there. 
In the state archives, kept in the library of the Lord 
of the Isle, are whole volumes of unpublished verse, 
— some by well-known hands, and others quite as 
good, by the last people you would think of as versifi- 
ers, — men who could pension off all the genuine 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 41 

poets in the country, and buy ten acres of Boston 
common, if it was for sale, with what they had left. 
Of course I had to write my little copy of verses with 
the rest; here it is, if you will hear me read it. 
When the sun is in the west, vessels sailing in an 
easterly direction look bright or dark to one who ob- 
serves them from the north or south, according to the 
tack they are sailing upon. Watching them from one 
of the windows of the great mansion, I saw these per- 
petual changes, and moralized thus : — 

SUN AND SHADOW. 

As I look from the isle, o'er its billows of green, 

To the billows of foam-crested blue, 
Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen, 

Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue : 
Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray 

As the chaff in the stroke of the flail; 
Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way, 

The sun gleaming bright on her sail. 

Yet her pilot is thinking of dangers to shun, — 

Of breakers that whiten and roar; 
How little he cares, if in shadow or sun 

They see him that gaze from the shore ! 
He looks to the beacon that looms from the reef, 

To the rock that is under his lee, 
As he drifts on the blast, like a wind-wafted leaf. 

O'er the gulfs of the desolate sea. 

Thus drifting afar to the dim- vaulted caves 

Where life and its ventures are laid, 
The dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves 

May see us in sunshine or shade ; 
Yet true to our course, though our shadow grow dark, 

We'll trim our broad sail as before , 
And stand by the rudder that governs the bark, 

Nor ask how we look from the shore ! 



42 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

— Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind 
ovei*tasked. Good mental machinery ought to break 
its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrust among 
them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse 
their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate 
force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a 
man from going mad. We frequently see persons in 
insane hospitals, sent there in consequence of what are 
called religious mental disturbances. I confess that 
I think better of them than of many who hold the 
same notions, and keep their wits and appear to enjoy 
I life very well, outside of the asylums. Any decent 
I person ought to go mad, if he really holds such or 
such opinions. It is very much to his discredit in 

i every point of view, if he does not. What is the use 
of my saying what some of these opinions are ? Per- 
haps more than one of you hold such as I should think 
ought to send you straight over to Somerville, if you 
) have any logic in your heads or any human feeling in 
your hearts. Anything that is brutal, cruel, heathen- 
ish, that makes life hopeless for the most of mankind 
and perhaps for entire races, — anything that assumes 
the necessity of the extermination of instincts which 
were given to be regulated, — no matter by what 
name you call it, — no matter whether a fakir, or a 
monk, or a deacon believes it, — if received, ought to 
produce insanity in every well-regidated mind. That 
condition becomes a normal one, under the circum- 
stances. I am very much ashamed of some people for 
retaining their reason, when they know perfectly well 

I* that if they were not the most stupid or the most self- 
ish of human beings, they would become non-compO' 
tes at once. 

[Nobody understood this but the theological stu- 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 43 

dent and the schoolmistress. They looked intelli- 
gently at each other ; but whether they were thinking 
about my paradox or not, I am not clear. — It would 
be natural enough. Stranger things have happened. 
Love and Death enter boarding-houses without asking 
the price of board, or whether there is room for them, 
Alas ! these young people are poor and pallid ! Love 
should be both rich and rosy, but must be either rich 
or rosy. Talk about military duty ! What is that to 
the warfare of a married maid-of-all-work, with the 
title of mistress, and an American female constitution, 
which collapses just in the middle third of life, and 
comes out vulcanized India-rubber, if it happen to live 
through the period when health and strength are most 
wanted ?] 

— Have I ever acted in private theatricals ? Often. 
I have played the part of the " Poor Gentleman," be- 
fore a, great many audiences, — more, I trust, than I 
shall ever face again. I did not wear a stage-costume, 
nor a wig, nor moustaches of burnt cork, but I was 
placarded and announced as a public performer, and 
at the proper hour I came forward with the ballet- 
dancer's smile upon my countenance, and made my 
bow and acted my part. I have seen my name stuck 
up in letters so big that I was ashamed to show myself 
in the place by daylight. I have gone to a town 
with a sober literary essay in my pocket, and seen my- 
self everywhere announced as the most desperate of 
buffos, — one who was obliged to restrain himself in 
the full exercise of his powers, from prudential consid- 
erations. I have been through as many hardships as 
Ulysses, in the pursuit of my histrionic vocation. I 
have travelled in cars imtil the conductors all knew 
me like a brother. I have run off the rails, and stuck 



44 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

all night in snow-drifts, and sat behind females that 
would have the window open when one could not 
wink without his eyelids freezing together. Perhaps 
I shall give you some of my experiences one of these 
days ; — I will not now, for I have something else for 
you. 

Private theatricals, as I have figured in them in 
country lyceum-halls, are one thing, — and private 
theatricals, as they may be seen in certain gilded and 
frescoed saloons of our metropolis, are another. Yes, 
it is pleasant to see real gentlemen and ladies, who 
do not think it necessary to mouth, and rant, and 
stride, like most of our stage heroes and heroines, in 
the characters which show off their graces and talents ; 
most of all to see a fresh, unrouged, unspoiled, high- 
bred young maiden, with a lithe figure, and a pleasant 
voice, acting in those love-dramas which make us 
young again to look upon, when real youth and beauty 
will play them for us. 

— Of course I wrote the prologue I was asked to 
write. I did not see the play, though. I knew there 
was a young lady in it, and that somebody was in love 
with her, and she was in love with him, and somebody 
(an old tutor, I believe) wanted to interfere, and, 
very naturally, the young lady was too sharp for him. 
The play of course ends charmingly ; there is a gen- 
eral reconciliation, and all concerned form a line and 
take each other's hands, as people always do after they 
have made up their quarrels, — and then the curtain 
falls, — if it does not stick, as it commonly does at 
private theatrical exhibitions, in which case a boy is 
detailed to pull it down, which he does, blushing vio- 
lently. 

Now, then, for my prologue. I am not going to 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. ii 

change my caesuras and cadences for anybody ; so if 
you do not like the heroic, or iambic trimeter brachy- 
catalectic, you had better not wait to hear it. 

THIS IS IT. 

A Prologue ? Well, of course the ladies know ; — 
I have my doubts. No matter, — here we go ! 
What is a prologue? Let our Tutor teach : 
Pro means beforehand; logus stands for speech. 
'Tis like the harper's prelude on the strings, 
The prima donna's courtesy ere she sings. 

" The world 's a stage," — as Shakspeare said, one day ; 

The stage a world — was what he meant to say. 

The outside world 's a blunder, that is clear; 

The real world that Nature meant is here. 

Here every foundling finds its lost mamma; 

Each rogue, repentant, melts his stern papa ; 

Misers relent, the spendthrift's debts are paid, 

The cheats are taken in the traps they laid ; 

One after one the troubles all are past 

Till the fifth act conies right side up at last. 

When the young couple, old folks, rogues, and all, 

Join hands, so happy at the curtain's fall. 

— Here suffering virtue ever finds relief. 

And black-browed ruflians always come to grief, 

— When the lorn damsel, with a frantic speech, 
And cheeks as hueless as a brandy-peach. 

Cries, " Help, kyind Heaven! " and drops upon her knees 

On the green — baize, — beneath the (canvas) trees, — 

See to her side avenging Valor fly: — 

"Ha! Villain! Draw! Now, Terraitorr, yield or die!'* 

— When the poor hero flounders in despair. 

Some dear lost uncle turns up millionaire, — 

Clasps the young scapegrace with paternal joy, 

Sobs on his neck, *' My hoij ! My boy!! MY BOY!! I" 

Ours, then, sweet friends, the real world to-night 
Of love that conquers in disaster's spite. 



46 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Ladies, attend! While woful cares and doubt 
Wrong the soft passion in the world without, 
Though fortune scowl, though prudence interfere, 
One thing is certain: Love will triumph here! 

Lords of creation, whom your ladies rule, — 

The world's great masters, when you're out of school, - 

Learn the brief moral of our evening's play: 

Man has his will, — but woman has her way! , 

While man's dull spirit toils in smoke and fire, 

Woman's swift instinct threads the electric wire, — 

The magic bracelet stretched beneath the waves 

Beats the black giant with his score of slaves. 

All earthly powers confess your sovereign art 

But that one rebel, — woman's wilful heart, 

All foes you master; but a woman's wit 

Lets daylight through you ere you know you're hit. 

So, just to picture what her art can do, 

Hear an old story made as good as new. 

Rudolph, professor of the headsman's trade, 

Alike was famous for his arm and blade. 

One day a prisoner Justice had to kill 

Knelt at the block to test the artist's skill. 

Bare-armed, swart-visaged, gaunt, and shaggy-browed, 

Rudolph the headsman rose above the crowd. 

His falchion lightened with a sudden gleam, 

As the pike's armor flashes in the stream. 

He sheathed his blade; he turned as if to go; 

The victim knelt, still waiting for the blow. 

" Why strikest not? Perform thy murderous act," 

The prisoner said. (His voice was slightly cracked.) 

*' Friend I have struck," the artist straight replied; 

** Wait but one moment, and yourself decide." 

He held his snuff-box, — " Now then, if you please! " 
The prisoner sniffed, and, with a crashing sneeze. 
Off his head tumbled, — bowled along the floor, — 
Bounced down the steps; — the prisoner said no morel 

Woman! thy falchion is a glittering eye; 
If death lurks in it, oh, how sweet to die I 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 47 

Thou takest hearts as Rudolph took the head ; 
We die with love, and never dream we 're dead ! 

The prologue went off very well, as I hear. No al- 
terations were suggested by the lady to whom it was 
sent, so far as I know. Sometimes people criticise 
the poems one sends them, and suggest all sorts of 
improvements." Who was that silly body that wanted 
Burns to alter " Scots wha hae," so as to lengthen the 
last line, thus ? — 

" Edward ! " Chains and slavery. 

Here is a little poem I sent a short time since to a 
committee for a certain celebration. I understood 
that it was to be a festive and convivial occasion, and 
ordered myself accordingly. It seems the president 
of the day was what is called a " teetotaller." I re- 
ceived a note from him in the following words, con- 
taining the copy subjoined, with the emendations an- 
nexed to it. 

" Dear Sir, — your poem gives good satisfaction to 
the committee. The sentiments expressed with refer- 
ence to liquor are not, however, those generally enter- 
tained by this community. I have therefore consulted 
the clergyman of this place, who has made some slight 
changes, which he thinks will remove all objections, 
and keep the valuable portions of the poem. Please 
to inform me of your charge for said poem. Our 
means are limited, etc., etc., etc. 

" Yours with respect." 

" I remember being asked by a celebrated man of letters to 
let him look over an early, but somewhat elaborate poem of 
mine. He read the manuscript and suggested the change of 
one word, which I adopted in deference to his opinion. The 
emendation was anything but an improvement, and in later 
editions the passage reads as when first written. 



48 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLEo 

Here it is, — with the slight alterations." 

Come ! fill a fresh bumper, — for why should we go 
logwood 

While the nootar still reddens our cups as they flow ! 

decoction 



Pour out the rich juicc e still bright with the sun, 

dye-stuff 
Till o'er the brimmed crystal the rubica shall run. 

half-ripened apples 

The purple glebed cluetcra their life-dews have bled; 

taste sugar of lead 

How sweet is the breath of the fragrance they zh cd- 1 

rank poisons wines ! ! ! 

For summer's laet rosc^ lie hid in the mees 

stable-boys smoking long-nines. 

That were garnered by maidcnc who laughed tbrcugb tho - vmc a 

scowl howl Bcoff sneer 

Then a smil*-, and a glass, and a reast, and a chccf, 

strychnine and whiskey, and ratsbane and beer 

For all the good - wino, and - wc ' vo s ome - of it - bor e 
In cellar, in pantry, in attic, in hall, 

Down, down, with the tyrant that masters us all ! 
L ong B - 7C tbo gav ccrvant that laugh is for ua - ai r I 

The company said I had been shabbily treated, and 
advised me to charge the committee double, — which 
I did. But as I never got my pay, I don't know that 
it made much difference. I am a very particular 

" I recollect a British criticism of the poem " with the slight 
alterations," in which the writer was quite indignant at the 
treatment my convivial song had received. No committee, he 
thought, would dare to treat a Scotch author in that way. I 
could not help being reminded of Sydney Smith, and the surgi- 
cal operation he proposed, in order to get a pleasantry into the 
head of a North Briton. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABI-E. 49'. 

person about having all I write printed as I write it. 
I require to see a proof, a revise, a re-revise, and a 
double re-revise, or fourth-proof rectified impression 
of all my productions, especially verse. A misprint 
kills a sensitive author. An intentional change of his 
text murders him. No wonder so many poets die 
young! 

I have nothing more to report at this time, except 
two pieces of advice I gave to the young women at 
table. One relates to a vulgarism of language, 
which I grieve to say is sometimes heard even from 
female lips. The other is of more serious purport, 
and applies to such as contemplate a change of condi- 
tion, — matrimony, in fact. 

— The woman who " calc'lates " is lost. 

— Put not your trust in money, but put your 
money in trust. 




III. 

[The " Atlantic " obeys the moon, and its LuNi- 
VERSARY has come round again. I have gathered up 
some hasty notes of my remarks made since the last 
high tides, which I respectfully submito Please to 
remember this is talk ; just as easy and just as for- 
mal as I choose to make it.] 

— I never saw an author in my life — saving, per- 
haps, one — that did not purr as audibly as a full- 
grown domestic cat (^Felis Catus^ Linn.) on having 
his fur smoothed in the right way by a skilful hand. 

But let me give you a caution. Be very careful 
how you tell an author he is droll. Ten to one he will 
hate you ; and if he does, be sure he can do you a 



60 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

mischief, and very probably will. Say you cried over 
his romance or Ids verses, and he will love you and 
send you a copy. You can laugh over that as much 
as you like, — in private. 

— Wonder why authors and actors are ashamed of 
being funny ? — Why, there are obvious reasons, and 
deep philosophical ones. The clown knows very well 
that the women are not in love with him, but with 
Hamlet, the fellow in the black cloak and plumed hat. 
Passion never laughs. The wit loiows that his place 
is at the tail of a procession. 

If you want the deep underljdng reason, I must 
take more time to tell it. There is a perfect con- 
sciousness in every form of wit, — using that term in 
its general sense, — that its essence consists in a par- 
tial and incomplete view of whatever it touches. It 
throws a single ray, separated from the rest, — red, 
yellow, blue, or any intermediate shade, — upon an 
object ; never white light ; that is the province of wis- 
dom. We get beautiful effects from wit, — all the 
prismatic colors, — but never the object as it is in fair 
daylight. A pun, which is a kind of wit, is a differ- 
ent and much shallower trick in mental optics ; throw- 
ing the shadoios of two objects so that one overlies 
the other. Poetry uses the rainbow tints for special 
effects, but always keeps its essential object in the 
purest white light of truth. — Will you allow me to 
pursue this subject a little farther? 

[They did n't allow me at that time, for somebody 
happened to scrape the floor with his chair just then ; 
which accidental sound, as all must have noticed, has 
the instantaneous effect that the cutting of the yellow 
hair by Iris had upon infelix Dido. It broke the 
charm, and that breakfast was over.] 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 51 

— Don't flatter yourselves that friendship author- 
izes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. 
On the contrary, the nearer you come into relation 
with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy 
become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, 
leave your friend to learn unpleasant truths from his 
enemies ; they are ready enough to tell them. Good- 
breeding never forgets that amoiir-pro'pre is univer- 
sal. When you read the story of the Archbishop 
and Gil Bias, you may laugh, if you will, at the poor 
old man's delusion ; but don't forget that the youth 
was the greater fool of the two, and that his master 
served such a booby rightly in turning him out of 
doors. 

— You need not get up a rebellion against what I 
say, if you find everything in my sayings is not ex- 
actly new. You can't possibly mistake a man who 
means to be honest for a literary pickj)ocket. I once 
read an introductory lecture that looked to me too 
learned for its latitude. On examination, I found all 
its erudition was taken ready-made from Disraeli. If 
I had been ill-natured, I should have shown up the 
little great man, who had once belabored me in his 
feeble way. But one can generally tell these whole- 
sale thieves easily enough, and they are not worth the 
trouble of putting them in the pillory. I doubt the 
entire novelty of my remarks just made on telling 
unpleasant truths, yet I am not conscious of any lar- 
ceny. 

Neither make too much of flaws and occasional over- 
statements. Some persons seem to think that abso- 
lute truth, in the form of rigidly stated propositions, 
is all tliat conversation admits. This is precisely as if 
a musician should insist on having nothing but perfect 



52 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

chords and simple melodies, — no diminished fifths, 
no flat sevenths, no flourishes, on any accomit. Now 
it is fair to say, that, just as music must have all 
these, so conversation must have its partial truths, its 
embellished truths, its exaggerated truths. It is in its 
higher forms an artistic product, and admits the ideal 
element as much as pictures or statues. One man 
who is a little too literal can spoil the talk of a whole 
tableful of men of esprit. — ''Yes," you say, "but 
who wants to hear fanciful people's nonsense ? Put 
the facts to it, and then see where it is ! " — Certainly, 
if a man is too fond of paradox, — if he is flighty and 
empty, — if, instead of striking those fifths and sev- 
enths, those harmonious discords, often so much bet- 
ter than the twinned octaves, in the music of thought, 
— if, instead of striking these, he jangles the chords, 
stick a fact into him like a stiletto. But remember 
that talking is one of the fine arts, — the noblest, the 
most important, and the most difficult, — and that its 
fluent harmonies may be spoiled by the intrusion of a 
single harsh note. Therefore conversation which is 
suggestive rather than argumentative, which lets out 
the most of each talker's results of thought, is com- 
monly the pleasantest and the most profitable. It is 
not easy, at the best, for two persons talking together 
to make the most of each other's thoughts, there are 
so many of them. 

[The company looked as if they wanted an explana- 
tion.] 

When John and Thomas, for instance, are talking 
together, it is natural enough that among the six 
there should be more or less confusion and misappre* 
bension. 

[Our landlady turned pale ; — no doubt she thought 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 53 

there was a screw loose in my intellects, — and that 
involved the probable loss of a boarder. A severe- 
looking person, who wears a Spanish cloak and a sad 
cheek, fluted by the passions of the melodrama, whom 
I understand to be the professional ruffian of the 
neighboring theatre, alluded, with a certain lifting of 
the brow, drawing down of the corners of the mouth, 
and somewhat rasping voce di petto^ to Falstaff's nine 
men in buckram. Everybody looked up ; I believe 
the old gentleman opposite was afraid I should seize 
the carving-knife ; at any rate, he slid it to one side, 
as it were carelessly.] 

I think, I said, I can make it plain to Benjamin 
Franklin here, that there are at least six personalities 
distinctly to be recognized as taldng part in that dia- 
logue between John and Thomas. 

' 1. The real John ; known only to his Maker. 

2. John's ideal John ; never the real one, and 
Three Johns, -l often very unlike him. 

3. Thomas's ideal John; never the real John, 
nor John's John, but often very unlike either. 

( 1. The real Thomas. 
Three Thomases, -l 2. Thomas's ideal Thomas. 
( 3. John's ideal Thomas. 

Only one of the three Johns is taxed ; only one can 
be weighed on a platform-balance ; but the other two 
are just as important in the conversation. Let us 
suppose the real John to be old, dull, and ill-looking. 
But as the Higher Powers have not conferred on men 
the gift of seeing themselves in the true light, John 
very possibly conceives himself to be youthful, witty, 
and fascinating, and talks from the point of view of 
this ideal. Thomas, again, believes him to be an art- 
ful rogue, we will say ; therefore he *s, so far as 
Thomas's attitude in the conversation is concerned, an 



54 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

artful rogue, tliough really simple and stupid. The 
same conditions apply to the three Thomases. It fol- 
lows, that, until a man can be found who knows him- 
self as his Maker knows him, or who sees himself as 
others see him, there must be at least six persons en- 
gaged in every dialogue between two. Of these, the 
least important, philosophically speaking, is the one 
that we have called the real person. No wonder two 
disputants often get angry, when there are six of them 
talking and listening all at the same time. 

[A very unphilosophical application of the above 
remarks was made by a young fellow answering to the 
name of John, who sits near me at table. A certain 
basket of peaches, a rare vegetable, little known to 
boarding-houses, was on its way to me via this unlet- 
tered Johannes. He appropriated the three that re- 
mained in the basket, remarking that there was just 
one apiece for him. I convinced hun that his practi- 
cal inference was hasty and illogical, but in the mean 
time he had eaten the peaches.] 

— The opinions of relatives as to a man's powers 
are very commonly of little value ; not merely because 
they sometimes overrate their own flesh and blood, as 
some may suppose ; on the contrary, they are quite as 
likely to underrate those whom they have grown into 
the habit of considering like themselves. The advent 
of genius is like what florists style the breaking of a 
seedling tulip into what we may call high-caste colors, 
-^ — ten thousand dingy flowers, then one with the di- 
vine streak ; or, if you prefer it, like the coming up 
in old Jacob's garden of that most gentlemanly little 
fruit, the seckel pear, which I have sometimes seen in 
shop-windows. It is a surprise, — there is nothing to 
account for it. All at once we find that twice two 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 55 

make five. Nature is fond of what are called " gift- 
enterprises." This little book of life which she has 
given into the hands of its joint possessors is com- 
monly one of the old story-books bound over again. 
Only once in a great while there is a stately poem in 
it, or its leaves are illuminated with the glories of art, 
or they enfold a draft for untold values signed by the 
million-fold millionnaire old mother herself. But 
strangers are commonly the first to find the " gift " 
that came with the little book. 

It may be questioned whether anything can be con- 
scious of its own flavor. Whether the musk-deer, or 
the civet-cat, or even a still more eloquently silent 
animal that might be mentioned, is aware of any per- 
sonal peculiarity, may well be doubted. No man 
knows his own voice ; many men do not know their 
own profiles. Every one remembers Carlyle's famous 
"Characteristics" article; allow for exaggerations, 
and there is a great deal in his doctrine of the seK- 
unconsciousness of genius. It comes under the great 
law just stated. This incapacity of knowing its own 
traits is often found in the family as well as in the 
individual. So never mind what your cousins, broth- 
ers, sisters, uncles, amits, and the rest, say about that 
fine poem you have written, but send it (postage-paid) 
to the editors, if there are any, of the "Atlantic," — 
which, by the way, is not so called because it is a no- 
tion^ as some dull wits wish they had said, but are too 
late. 

— Scientific knowledge, even in the most modest 
persons, has mingled with it a something which par- 
takes of insolence. Absolute, peremptory facts are 
bullies, and those who keep company with them are 
apt to get a bullying habit of mind;— -not of manners, 



56 THE AUTOCKAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

perhaps ; they may be soft and smooth, but the smile 
they carry has a quiet assertion in it, such as the 
Chamj)ion of the Heavy Weights, commonly the best- 
natured, but not the most diffident of men, wears upon 
what he very inelegantly caUs his " mug." Take the 
man, for instance, who deals in the mathematical sci- 
ences. There is no elasticity in a mathematical fact ; 
if you bring up against it, it never yields a hair's 
breadth ; everything must go to pieces that comes in 
collision with it. What the mathematician knows 
being absolute, unconditional, incapable of suffering- 
question, it should tend, in the nature of things, to 
breed a despotic way of thinking. So of those who 
deal with the palpable and often unmistakable facts 
of external nature ; only in a less degree. Every 
probability — and most of our common, working be- 
liefs are probabilities — is provided with buffers at 
both ends, which break the force of opposite opinions 
clashing against it; but scientific certainty has no 
spring in it, no courtesy, no possibility of yielding. 
All this must react on the minds which handle these 
forms of truth. 

— Oh, you need not tell me that Messrs. A. and B. 
are the most gracious, unassuming people in the world, 
and yet preeminent in the ranges of science I am re- 
ferring to. I know that as well as you. But mark 
this which I am going to say once for all : If I had 
not force enough to project a principle full in the face 
of the half dozen most obvious facts which seem to 
contradict it, I would think only in single file from 
this day forward. A rash man, once visiting a certain 
noted institution at South Boston, ventured to express 
the sentiment, that man is a rational being. An old 
woman who was an attendant in the Idiot School con- 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 57 

tradicted the statement, and appealed to the facts be- 
fore the speaker to disprove it. The rash man stuck 
to his hasty generalization, notwithstanding. 

[ — It is my desire to be useful to those with whom 
I am associated in my daily relations. I not unfre- 
quently practise the divine art of music in company 
with our landlady's daughter, who, as I mentioned be- 
fore, is the owner of an accordion. Having myself a 
well-marked barytone voice of more than haK an oc- 
tave in compass, I sometimes add my vocal powers to 
her execution of 

" Thou, thou reign' St in this bosom,'* 

not, however, unless her mother or some other discreet 
female is present, to prevent misinterpretation or re- 
mark. I have also taken a good deal of interest in 
Benjamin Franklin, before referred to, sometimes 
called B. F., or more frequently Frank, in imitation of 
that felicitous abbreviation, combining dignity and 
convenience, adopted by some of his betters. My ac- 
quaintance with the French language is very imperfect, 
I having never studied it anywhere but in Paris, which 
is awkward, as B. F. devotes himself to it with the 
peculiar advantage of an Alsacian teacher. The boy, 
I think, is doing well, between us, notwithstanding. 
The following is an uncorrected French exercise, 
written by this young gentleman. His mother thinks 
it very creditable to his abilities ; though, being unac- 
quainted with the French language, her judgment can- 
not be considered final. 



58 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 



Le Rat dks Salons a Lecture. 
Ce rat 91 est un animal fort singulier. 11 a deux pattes de 
derriere sur lesquelles il marclie, et deux pattes de devant dont 
il fait usage pour tenir les journaux. Get animal a la peau 
noire pour le plupart, etporte un cercle blanchatre autour de son 
cou. On le trouve tous les jours aux dits salons, ou il demeure, 
dio-ere, s'il y a de quoi dans son interieur, respire, tousse, eter- 
nue, dort, et ronfle quelquefois, ayant toujours le sembbnt de 
lire. On ne sait pas s'il a une autre gite que 9elk. II a Pair 
d'une bete tres stupide, mais il estd'une sagacite et d'une vitesse 
extraordinaire quand il s'agit de saisir un journal nouveau. On 
ne sait pas pourqnoi il lit, parcequ'il ne parait pas avoir des 
idees. II vocalise rarement, mais en revanche, il fait des bruits 
nasaux divers. II porte un crayon dans une de ses poches pec- 
torales, avec lequel il fait des marques sur les bords des jour- 
naux et des livres, semblable aux suivans : ! I ! — Bah! Pooh I 
II ne faut pas cependant les prendre pour des signes d 'intelli- 
gence. II ne vole pas, ordinairement ; il fait rarement meme 
des echanges de parapluie, et jamais de chapeau, parceque son 
chapeau a toujours un caractere specifique. On ne sait pas au 
juste ce dont il se nourrit. Feu Cuvier dtait d'avis que c'etait 
de I'odeur du cuir des reliures ; ce qu'on dit d'etre une nourri- 
ture animale fort saine, et peu chere. II vit bien lonfitems. Enfin 
il nieure, en laissant a ses hdritiers une carte du Salon k Lecture 
ou il avait existe pendant sa vie. On pretend qu'il revient toutes 
les nuits, apres la mort, visiter le Salon. On pent le voir, dit 
on, h. minuit, dans sa place habituelle, tenant le journal du soir, 
et ayant k sa main un crayon de charbon. Le lendemain on 
trouve des caracteres inconnus sur les bords du journal. Ce qui 
prouve que le spiritualisme est vrai, et que Messieurs les Pro- 
fesseurs de Cambridge sont des imbeciles qui ne savent rien du 
tout, du tout. 

I think this exercise, whicli I Lave not corrected, or 
allowed to Le touched in any way, is not discreditable 
to B. F. You observe tliat Le is acquiring a knowl- 
edge of zoology at tlie same time tliat Le is learning 
FrencL. Fathers of families in moderate circimistances 
will find it profitable to their cLildren, and an econom- 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 59 

icai mode of instruction, to set them to revising and 
amending this boy's exercise. The passage was orig- 
inally taken from the " Histoire Naturelle des Betes 
Kiiminans et Rongeurs, Bipedes et Autres," lately 
published in Paris. This was translated into English 
and published in London. It was republished at 
Great Pedlington, with notes and additions by tlie 
American editor. The notes consist of an interroga^ 
tion-mark on page 53d, and a reference (p. 12Tth) to 
another book "edited" by the same hand. The ad- 
ditions consist of the editor's name on the title-page 
and back, with a complete and authentic list of said 
editor's honorary titles in the first of these localities. 
Our boy translated the translation back into French. 
This may be compared with the original, to be found 
on Shelf 13, Division X, of the Public Library of this 
metropolis.] 

— Some of you boarders ask me from time to time 
why I don't write a story, or a novel, or something of 
that kind. Instead of answering each one of you sep- 
arately, I will thank you to step up into the whole- 
sale department for a few moments, where I deal in 
answers by the piece and by the bale. 

That every articulately-speaking human being has 
in him stuff for one novel in three volumes duodecimo 
has long been with me a cherished belief. It has 
been maintained, on the other hand, that many persons 
cannot write more than one novel, — that all after 
that are likely to be failures. — Life is so much more 
tremendous a thing in its heights and depths than 
any transcript of it can be, that all records of human 
experience are as so many bound herharia to the in- 
numerable glowing, glistening, rustling, breathing, fra- 
grance-laden, poison-sucking, life-giving, death-distill- 



60 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

ing leaves and flowers of the forest and the prairies. All 
we can do with books of human experience is to make 
them alive again with something borrowed from our 
own lives. We can make a book alive for us just in 
proportion to its resemblance in essence or in form to 
our own experience. Now an author's first novel is 
naturally drawn, to a great extent, from his personal 
experiences ; that is, is a literal copy of nature under 
various slight disguises. But the moment the author 
gets out of his personality, he must have the creative 
power, as well as the narrative art and the sentiment, 
in order to tell a living story ; and this is rare. 

Besides, there is great danger that a man's first life- 
story shall clean him out, so to speak, of his best 
thoughts. Most lives, though their stream is loaded 
with sand and turbid with alluvial waste, drop a ievv 
golden grains of wisdom as they flow along. Often- 
times a single cradling gets them all, and after that 
the poor man's labor is only rewarded by mud and 
worn pebbles. All which proves that I, as an individ- 
ual of the human family, could write one novel or story 
at any rate, if I woidd. 

Why don't I, then? — Well, there are several 

reasons against it. In the first place, I should tell all 
my secrets, and I maintain that verse is the proper 
medium for such revelations. Rhythm and rhyme 
and the harmonies of musical language, the play of 
fancy, the fire of imagination, the flashes of passion, 
so hide the nakedness of a heart laid open, that hardly 
any confession, transfigured in the luminous halo of 
poetry, is reproached as self-exposure. A beauty 
shows herself under the chandeliers, protected by the 
glitter of her diamonds, with such a broad snow-drift 
of white arms and shoulders laid bare, that, were she 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 61 

unadorned and in plain calico, she would be unendura- 
ble — in the opinion of the ladies. 

Again, I am terribly afraid I should show up all 
my friends. I should like to know if all story-tellers 
do not do this? Now I am afraid all my friends 
would not bear showing up very well ; for they have 
an average share of the common weakness of hu- 
manity, which I am pretty certain would come out. 
Of all that have told stories among us there is hardly 
one I can recall who has not drawn too faithfully 
some living portrait which might better have been 
spared. 

Once more, I have sometimes thought it possible I 
might be too dull to write such a story as I should 
wish to write. 

And finally, I think it very likely I shall write a 
story one of these days. Don't be surprised at any 
time, if you see me coming out with " The School- 
mistress," or " The Old Gentleman Opposite." [ Our 
schoolmistress and our old gentleman that sits oppo- 
site had left the table before I said this.] I want my 
glory for writing the same discounted now, on the 
spot, if you please. I will write when I get ready. 
How many people live on the reputation of the repu- 
tation they might have made ! 

— I saw you smiled when I spoke about the possi- 
bility of my being too dull to write a good story. I 
don't pretend to know what you meant by it, but I 
take occasion to make a remark which may hereafter 
prove of value to some among you. — When one of 
us who has been led by native vanity or senseless flat- 
tery to think himself or herself possessed of talent 
arrives at the fidl and final conclusion that he or she 
is really dull, it is one of the most tranquillizing and 



62 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

blessed convictions that can enter a mortal's mind. 
All our failures, our short-comings, our strange disap- 
pointments in the effect of our efforts are lifted from 
our bruised shoulders, and fall, like Christian's pack, 
at the feet of that Omnipotence which has seen fit to 
deny us the pleasant gift of high intelligence, - — with 
which one look may overflow us in some wider sphere 
of being. 

— How sweetly and honestly one said to me the 
other day, '* I hate books ! " A gentleman, — singu- 
larly free from affectations, — not learned, of course, 
but of perfect breeding, which is often so much better 
than learning, — by no means dull, in the sense of 
knowledge of the world and society, but certainly not 
clever either in the arts or sciences, — his company is 
pleasing to all who know him. I did not recognize in 
him inferiority of literary taste half so distinctly as I 
did simplicity of character and fearless acknowledg- 
ment of his inaptitude for scholarship. In fact, I 
think there are a great many gentlemen and others, 
who read with a mark to keep their place, that really 
" hate books," but never had the wit to find it out, or 
the manliness to own it. \^Entre nous, I always read 
with a mark.] 

We get into a way of thinking as if what we call an 
" intellectual man " was, as a matter of course, made 
up of nine tenths, or thereabouts, of book-learning, and 
one tenth himself. But even if he is actually so com- 
pounded, he need not read much. Society is a strong 
solution of books. It draws the virtue out of what is 
best worth reading, as hot water draws the strength of 
tea-leaves. If I were a prince, I would hire or buy a 
private literary tea-pot, in which I would steep all the 
leaves of new books that promised well. The infusion 



THE AUTOCRAT O^ THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 63 

would do for me without the vegetable fibre. You un- 
derstand me ; I would have a person whose sole busi- 
ness should be to read day and night, and talk to me 
whenever I wanted him to. I know the man I would 
have : a quick-witted, out-spoken, incisive fellow ; 
knows history, or at any rate has a shelf full of books 
about it, which he can use handily, and the same of 
all useful arts and sciences ; knows all the common 
plots of plays and novels, and the stock company of 
characters that are continually coming on in new cos- 
tume ; can give you a criticism of an octavo in an ep- 
ithet and a wink, and you can depend on it ; cares for 
nobody except for the virtue there is in what he says ; 
delights in taking off big wigs and professional gowns, 
and in the disembalming and unbandaging of all lit- 
erary mummies. Yet he is as tender and reverential 
to all that bears the mark of genius, — that is, of a 
new influx of truth or beauty, — as a nun over her 
missal. In short, he is one of those men that know 
everything except how to make a living. Him would 
I keep on the square next my own royal compartment 
on life's chessboard. To him I would push up another 
pawn, in the shape of a comely and wise young woman, 
whom he would of course take, — to wife. For all 
contingencies I would liberally provide. In a word, 
I would, in the plebeian, but expressive phrase, " put 
him through " all the material part of life ; see him 
sheltered, warmed, fed, button-mended, and all that, 
^ust to be able to lay on his talk when I liked, — with 
the privilege of shutting it off at will. 

A Club is the next best thing to this, strung like a 
harp, with about a dozen ringing intelligences," each 

" The " Saturday Club," before referred to, answered as well 
to this description as some others better known to history. 



64 THE AUTOCRAT OP THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

answering to some chord of the macrocosm. They do 
well to dine together once in a while. A dinner-party 
made up of such elements is the last triumph of civil- 
ization over barbarism. Nature and art combine to 
charm the senses ; the equatorial zone of the system is 
soothed by well-studied artifices ; the faculties are off 
duty, and fall into their natural attitudes ; you see 
wisdom in slippers and science in a short jacket. 

The whole force of conversation depends on how 
much you can take for granted. Vulgar chess-players 
have to play their game out ; nothing short of the 
brutality of an actual checkmate satisfies their dull 
apprehensions. But look at two masters of that noble 
game ! White stands well enough, so far as you can 
see ; but Red says, Mate in six moves ; — ^ White looks, 
— nods ; — the game is over. Just so in talking with 
first-rate men ; especially when they are good-natured 
and expansive, as they are apt to be at table. That 
blessed clairvoyance which sees into things without 
opening them, — that glorious license, which, having 
shut the door and driven the reporter from its key- 
hole, calls upon Truth, majestic virgin ! to get down 
from her pedestal and drop her academic poses, and 
take a festive garland and the vacant place on the 
medius lectus, — that carnival-shower of questions and 
replies and comments, large axioms bowled over the 
mahogany like bomb-shells from professional mortars, 
and explosive wit dropping its trains of many-colored 
fire, and the mischief-makmg rain of hon-hons pelt= 
ing everybody that shows himself, — the picture of 
a truly intellectual banquet is one which the old Di- 

Mathematics, music, art, the physical and biological sciences, his- 
tory, philosophy, poetry, and other branches of imaginative liter- 
ature were all represented by masters in their several realms. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 65 

vinities might well have attempted to reproduce in 
their — 

— " Oh, oh, oh ! " cried the young fellow whom 
they call John, — " that is from one of your lec- 
tures ! " 

I know it, I replied, — I concede it, I confess it, pro- 
claim it. 

" The trail of the serpent is over them all ! " 

All lecturers, all professors, all schoolmasters, have 
ruts and grooves in their minds into wliich their con- 
versation is perpetually sliding. Did you never, in 
riding through the woods of a still June evening, sud- 
denly feel that you had passed into a warm stratum of 
air, and in a minute or two strike the chill layer of at- 
mosphere beyond ? Did you never, in cleaving the 
green waters of the Back Bay, — where the Provin- 
cial blue-noses are in the habit of beating the " Met- 
ropolitan " boat-clubs, — find yourself in a tepid streak, 
a narrow, local gulf-stream, a gratuitous warm-bath 
a little underdone, through which your glistening 
shoulders soon flashed, to bring you back to the cold 
realities of full-sea temperature ? Just so, in talking 
with any of the characters above referred to, one not 
unfrequently finds a sudden change in the style of the 
conversation. The lack-lustre eye, rayless as a Beacon- 
Street door-plate in August, all at once fills with 
light ; the face flings itself wide open like the church- 
portals when the bride and bridegoom enter; the 
little man grows in stature before your eyes, like the 
small prisoner with hair on end, beloved yet dreaded 
of early childhood; you were talking with a dwarf 
and an imbecile, — you have a giant and a trumpet- 
tongued angel before you ! — Nothing but a streak out 



66 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 

of a fifty-dollar lecture. — As when, at some unlooked- 
for moment, tlie miglity fountain-column springs into 
the air before the astonished passer-by, — silver-footed, 
diamond-crowned, rainbow-scarfed, — from the bosom 
of that fair sheet, sacred to the hymns of quiet batra- 
chians at home, and the epigrams of a less amiable and 
less elevated order of reptilia m other latitudes. 

— Who was that person that was so abused some 
time since for saying that in the conflict of two races 
our sympathies naturally go with the higher? No 
matter who he was. Now look at what is going on in 
India, — a white, superior " Caucasian " race, against 
a dark-skinned, inferior, but still " Caucasian " race, 
— and where are English and American sympathies ? 
We can't stop to settle all the doubtful questions ; all 
we know is, that the brute nature is sure to come out 
most strongly in the lower race, and it is the general 
law that the human side of humanity should treat the 
brutal side as it does the same nature in the inferior 
animals, — tame it or crush it. The India mail brings 
stories of women and children outraged and mur- 
dered; the royal stronghold is in the hands of the 
babe-kiUers. England takes down the Map of the 
World, which she has girdled with empire, and makes 
a correction thus : Delhi. Dele, The civilized world 
says. Amen. 

— Do not think, because I talk to you of many sub- 
jects briefly, that I should not find it much lazier work 
to take each one of them and dilute it down to an 
essay. Borrow some of my old college themes and 
water my remarks to suit yourselves, as the Homeric 
heroes did with their melas oinos^ — that black, sweet, 
syrupy wine which they used to alloy with three parts 
or more of the flowing stream. [Could it have been 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLEo C7 

melasses, as Webster and his provincials spell it, — or 
Molossa's, as dear old smattering, chattering, would- 
be-College-President, Cotton Mather, has it in the 
" Magnalia " ? Ponder thereon, ye small antiquaries 
who make barn-door-fov/1 flights of learning in '' Notes 
and Queries ! " — ye Historical Societies, in one of 
whose venerable triremes I, too, ascend the stream of 
time, while other hands tug at the oars ! — ye Amines 
of parasitical literature, who pick up your grains of 
native-grown food with a bodkin, having gorged upon 
less honest fare, until, like the great minds Goethe 
speaks of, you have "made a Golgotha" of your pages! 
— ponder thereon !] 

— Before you go, this morning, I want to read you 
a copy of verses. You will understand by the title 
that they are written in an imaginary character. I 
don't doubt they will fit some family-man well enough. 
I send it forth as " Oak Hall " projects a coat, on a 
priori grounds of conviction that it will suit some- 
body. There is no loftier illustration of faith than 
this. It believes that a soul has been clad in flesh ; 
that tender parents have fed and nurtured it ; that its 
mysterious compages or fram^-work has survived its 
myriad exposures and reached the stature of matur- 
ity ; that the Man, now self -determining, has given in 
his adhesion to the traditions and habits of the race in 
favor of artificial clothing ; that he will, having all the 
world to choose from, select the very locality where 
this audacious generalization has been acted upon. It 
builds a garment cut to the pattern of an Idea, and 
trusts that Nature will model a material shape to fit 
it. There is a prophecy in every seam, and its pock- 
ets are f uU of inspiration. — Now hear the verses. 



68 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

THE OLD MAN DREAMS. 

for one hour of youthful joy! 
Give back my twentieth spring! 

1 'd rather laugh a bright-haired boy 

Than reign a gray-beard king ! 

Off with the wrinkled spoils of age I 
Away with learning's crown! 

Tear out life's wisdom-written page. 
And dash its trophies down ! 

One moment let my life-blood stream 
From boyhood's fount of flame! 

Give me one giddy, reeling dream 
Of life all love and fame ! 

— My listening angel heard the prayer, 
And calmly sraihng, said, 

** If I but touch thy silvered hair, 
Thy hasty wish hath sped. 

" But is there nothing in thy track 
To bid thee fondly stay. 
While the swift seasons hurry back 
To find the wished-for day? " 

— Ah, truest soul of womankind! 
Without thee, what were life? 

One bliss I cannot leave behind: 
I '11 take — my — precious — wife! 

— The angel took a sapphire pen 
And wrote in rainbow dew, 

'^^The man would be a boy again, 
And be a husband too! " 

— " And is there nothing yet unsaid 
Before the change appears ? 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 69 

Remember, all their gifts have fled 
With those dissolving years ! " 

Why, yes; for memory would recall 

My fond paternal joys ; 
I could not bear to leave them all ; 

I '11 take — my — girl — and — boys I 



The smiling angel dropped his pen,- 

" Why this will never do; 
The man would be a boy again, 

And be a father too' " 

And so I laughed, — my laughter woke 
The household with its noise, — 

And wrote my dream, when morning broke 
To please the gray-haired boys. 



IV. 

[I am so well pleased with my boarding-house that 
I intend to remain there, perhaps for years. Of 
course I shall have a great many conversations to re- 
port, and they will necessarily be of different tone 
and on different subjects. The talks are like the 
breakfasts, — sometimes dipped toast, and sometimes 
dry. You must take them as they come. How can 
I do what all these letters ask me to ? " No. 1. wants 

• The letters received by authors from unknown correspond- 
ents form a curious and, I believe, almost unrecorded branch of 
literature. The most interesting fact connected with these let- 
ters is this. If a -w^riter has a distinct personality of character, 
an intellectual flavor peculiarly his own, and his writings are 
somewhat widely spread abroad, he will meet with some, and it 
may be many, readers who are specially attracted to him by a 
certain singularly strong affinity. A writer need not be sur- 
prised when some simple-hearted creature, evidently perfectly 



70 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

serious and earnest thought. No. 2. (letter smells of 
bad cigars) must have more jokes ; wants me to tell a 
" good storey " which he has copied out for me. (1 
suppose two letters before the word " good " refer to 
some Doctor of Divinity who told the story.) No. 3. 
(in female hand) — more poetry. No. 4. wants some- 
thing that would be of use to- a practical mane 
(Pralictical malm he probably pronounces it.) No. 
5. (gilt-edged, sweet-scented) — "more sentiment," — 
" heart's outpourings." — 

My dear friends, one and all, I can do nothing but 

sincere, with no poem or story in the back-ground for which he 
or she wants your critical offices, meaning too frequently your 
praise, and nothing else, — when this kind soul assures him or 
her that he or she, the correspondent, loves to read the pro- 
ductions of him or her, the writer, better than those of any 
other author living or dead. There is no need of accounting 
for their individual preferences. What if a reader prefer you 
to the classics, whose words are resounding through " the corri- 
dors of time!" You probably come much nearer to his intel- 
lectual level. The rose is the sweetesli growth of the garden, 
but shall not your harmless, necessary cat prefer the aroma of 
that antiquely odorous valerian, not unfamiliar to hysteric 
womanhood? " How can we stand the fine things that are said 
of us?" asked one of a bright New Englander, whom New 
York has borrowed from us. " Because we feel that they are 
}'r«e," he answered. At any rate if they are true for those who 
say them, we need not quarrel with their superlatives. 

But what revelations are to be read in these letters! From 
the lisp of vanity, commending itself to the attention of the 
object of its admiration, to the cry of despair, which means in- 
sanity or death, if a wise word of counsel or a helping hand 
does not stay it, what a gamut of human utterances! Each in- 
dividual writer feels as if he or she were the only one to be 
listened to and succored, little remembering that merely to ac- 
knowledge the receipt of the letters that come by every post 
is no small part of every day's occupation to a good-natured 
and moderately popular writer. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 71 

report such remarks as I happen to have made at our 
breakfast-table. Their character will depend on many- 
accidents, — a good deal on the particular persons in 
the company to whom they were addressed. It so 
happens that those which follow were mainly in- 
tended for the divinity-student and the schoolmistress ; 
though others whom I need not mention saw fit to 
interfere, with more or less propriety, in the conver- 
sation. This is one of my privileges as a talker ; and 
of course, when I was not talking for our whole com- 
pany I don't expect all the readers of this periodical 
to be interested in my notes of what was said. Still, 
I think there may be a few that will rather like this 
vein, — possibly prefer it to a livelier one, — serious 
young men, and young women generally, in life's 
roseate parenthesis from years of age to in- 
clusive. 

Another privilege of talking is to misquote. — Of 
course it was n't Proserpina that actually cut the yel- 
low hair, — but Iris. (As I have since told you) it 
was the former lady's regular business, but Dido had 
used herself ungenteelly, and Madame d'Enfer stood 
firm on the point of etiquette. So the bathycolpian 
Here, — Juno, in Latin, — sent down Iris instead. But 
I was mightily pleased to see that one of the gentle- 
men that do the heavy articles for the celebrated 
" Oceanic Miscellany " misquoted Campbell's line 
without any excuse. " Waft us home the message " 
of course it ought to be. Will he be duly grateful for 
the correction ?] 

— The more we study the body and the mind, the 
more we find both to be governed, not hi/., but accord- 
ing to laws, such as v/e observe in the larger universe. 
— You think you know all about walking., — don t 



72 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

you, now? Well, how do you suppose your lower 
limbs are held to your body ? They are sucked up by 
two cupping vessels (" cotyloid " — cup-like — cavi- 
ties), and held there as long as you live, and longer. 
At any rate, you think you move them backward and 
forward at such a rate as your will determines, don't 
you ? On the contrary, they swing just as any other 
pendulums swing, at a fixed rate, determined by their 
length. You can alter this by muscular power, as you 
can take hold of the pendulum of a clock and make it 
move faster or slower ; but your ordinary gait is timed 
by the same mechanism as the movements of the solar 
system. 

[My friend, the Professor, told me all this, refer- 
ring me to certain German physiologists by the name 
of Weber for proof of the facts, which, however, he 
said he had often verified. I appropriated it to my 
own use ; what can one do better than this, when one 
has a friend that tells him anything worth remember- 
ing? 

The Professor seems to think that man and the 
general powers of the universe are in partnership. 
Some one was saying that it had cost nearly half a 
million to move the Leviathan ** only so far as they 
had got it already. — Why, — said the Professor, — 
they might have hired an earthquake for less 
money !] 

Just as we find a mathematical rule at the bottom 

" *' The Leviathan " was the name first applied to the huge 
vessel afterwards known as the " Great Eastern." The trouble 
which rose from its being built out of its " native element," as 
the newspapers call it, was like the puzzle of the Primrose 
household after the great family picture, with " as many sheep 
as the painter could put in for nothing," was finished. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 73 

of many of the bodily movements, just so thought may 
be supposed to have its regular cycles. Such or such 
a thought comes round periodically, in its turn. Acci- 
dental suggestions, however, so far interfere with the 
regular cycles, that we may find them practically be- 
yond our power of recognition. Take all this for what 
it is worth, but at any rate you will agree that there 
are certain particular thoughts which do not come up 
once a day, nor once a week, but that a year would 
hardly go round without your having them pass 
through your mind. Here is one which comes up at 
intervals in this way. Some one speaks of it, and there 
is an instant and eager smile of assent in the listener 
or listeners. Yes, indeed ; they have often been struck 
by it. 

All at once a conviction flashes through us that 
we have been in the same precise circumstances as at 
the present instant^ once or many times before. 

O, dear, yes ! — said one of the company, — every- 
body has had that feeling. 

The landlady did n't know anything about such no- 
tions ; it was an idee in folks' heads, she expected. 

The schoolmistress said, in a hesitating sort of way, 
that she knew the feeling well, and did n't like to ex- 
perience it ; it made her think she was a ghost, some- 
times. 

The young fellow whom they call John said he knew 
all about it ; he had just lighted a cheroot the other 
day, when a tremendous conviction all at once came 
over him that he had done just that same thing ever 
80 many times before. I looked severely at him, and 
his countenance immediately fell — on the side to- 
vmrd me ; I cannot answer for the other, for he can 
wink and laugh with either half of his face without 
the other half's knowinsf it. 



74 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

— I have noticed — I went on to say — the follow- 
ing circumstances connected with these sudden impres- 
sions. First, that the condition which seems to be the 
duplicate of a former one is often very trivial, — one 
that might have presented itself a hundred times. 
Secondly, that the impression is very evanescent, and 
that it is rarely, if ever, recalled by any voluntary ef- 
fort, at least after any time has elapsed. Thirdly, 
that there is a disinclination to record the circum- 
stances, and a sense of incapacity to reproduce the 
state of mind in "words. Fourthly, I have often felt 
that the duplicate condition had not only occurred 
once before, but that it was familiar and, as it seemed, 
habitual. Lastly, I have had the same convictions in 
my dreams. 

How do I account for it ? — Why, there are several 
ways that I can mention, and you may take your 
choice. The first is that which the young lady hinted 
at ; — that these flashes are sudden recollections of a 
previous existence. I don't believe that; for I re- 
member a poor student I used to know told me he had 
such a conviction one day when he was blacking liis 
boots, and I can't think he had ever lived in another 
world where they use Day and Martin. 

Some think that Dr. Wigan's doctrine of the brain's 
being a double organ, its hemispheres working to- 
gether like the two eyes, accounts for it. One of the 
hemispheres hangs fire, they suppose, and the small 
interval between the perceptions of the nimble and 
the sluggish half seems an indefinitely long period, 
and therefore the second perception appears to be the 
copy of another, ever so old. But even allowing the 
centre of perception to be double, I can see no good 
reason for supposing this indefinite lengthening of th*^ 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 75 

time, nor any analogy that bears it out. It seems to 
me most likely that the coincidence of circumstances 
is very partial, but that we take this partial resem- 
blance for identity, as we occasionally do resemblances 
of persons. A momentary posture of circiunstances 
is so far like some preceding one that we accept it as 
exactly the same, just as we accost a stranger occa- 
sionally, mistaking him for a friend. The apparent 
similarity may be owing perhaps, quite as much to the 
mental state at the time, as to the outward circum- 
stances. 

— Here is another of these curiously recurring re- 
marks. I have said it, and heard it many times, and 
occasionally met with something like it in books, — 
somewhere in Bulwer's novels, I think, and in one of 
the works of Mr. Olmsted, I know. 

Memory^ imagination^ old sentiments and associa- 
tions^ are more readily reached through the sense of 
SMELL than hy cdfnost any other chajinel. 

Of course the particular odors which act upon each 
person's susceptibilities differ. — O, yes ! I will tell 
you some of mine. The smell of phosj^horus is one 
of them. During a year or two of adolescence I used 
to be dabbling in chemistry a good deal, and as about 
that time I had my little aspirations and passions like 
another, some of these things got mixed up with each 
other : orange-colored fumes of nitrous acid, and vis- 
ions as bright and transient ; reddening litmus-paper, 
and blushing cheeks ; — eheu ! 

" Soles occidere et redire possunt," 

but there is no reagent that will redden the faded 

roses of eighteen hundred and spare them ! But, 

as I was saying, phosphorus fires this train of associa- 



76 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

tions in an instant; its luminous vapors with their 
penetrating odor throw me into a trance ; it comes to 
me in a double sense " trailing clouds of glory." Only 
the confounded Vienna matches, oliiie phosphorge- 
rucli^ have worn my sensibilities a little. 

Then there is the marigold. When I was of small- 
est dimensions, and wont to ride impacted between 
the knees of fond parental pair, we would sometimes 
cross the bridge to the next village-town and stop op- 
posite a low, brown, " gambrel-roofed " cottage. Out 
of it would come one Sally, sister of its swarthy ten- 
ant, swarthy herself, shady-lipped, sad-voiced, and, 
bending over her flower-bed, would gather a " posy," 
as she called it, for the little boy. Sally lies in the 
churchyard with a slab of blue slate at her head, 
lichen-crusted, and leaning a little within the last few 
years. Cottage, garden-beds, posies, grenadier-like 
rows of seedling onions, — stateliest of vegetables, — 
all are gone, but the breath of a marigold brings them 
all back to me. 

Perhaps the herb everlastiiig^ the fragrant immor- 
telle of our autumn fields, has the most suggestive 
odor to me of all those that set me dreaming. I can 
hardly describe the strange thoughts and emotions 
which come to me as I inhale the aroma of its pale, 
dry, rustling flowers. A something it has of sepulchral 
spicery, as if it had been brought from the core of 
some great pyramid, where it had lain on the breast 
of a mummied Pharaoh. Something, too, of immor- 
tality in the sad, faint sweetness lingering so long in 
its lifeless petals. Yet this does not tell why it fills 
my eyes with tears and carries me in blissfid thought 
to the banks of asphodel that border the River of 
Life. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 77 

— I should not have talked so much about these 
personal susceptibilities, if I had not a remark to 
make about them which I believe is a new one. It is 
this. There may be a physical reason for ihe strange 
connection between the sense of smell and the mind. 
The olfactory nerve, — so my friend, the Professor, 
tells me, — is the only one directly connected with the 
hemispheres of the brain, the parts in which, as we 
have every reason to believe, the intellectual processes 
are performed. To speak more truly, the olfactory 
" nerve " is not a nerve at all, he says, but a part of 
the brain, in intimate connection with its anterior 
lobes. Whether this anatomical arrangement is at 
the bottom of the facts I have mentioned, I v/ill not 
decide, but it is curious enough to be worth remem- 
bering. Contrast the sense of taste, as a source of 
suggestive impressions, with that of smell. Now the 
Professor assures me that you will find the nerve of 
taste has no immediate connection with the brain 
proper, but only with the prolongation of the spinal 
cord. 

[The old gentleman opposite did not pay much at- 
tention, I think, to this hypothesis of mine. But 
while I was speaking about the sense of smell he 
nestled about in his seat, and presently succeeded in 
getting out a large red bandanna handkerchief. Then 
he lurched a little to the other side, and after much 
tribulation at last extricated an ample roimd snuff- 
box. I looked as he opened it and felt for the wonted 
pugil. Moist rappee, and a Tonka-bean lying therein. 
I made the manual sign understood of all mankind 
that use the precious dust, and presently my bram, 
too, responded to the long unused stimulus. — O boys, 
— that were, — actual papas and possible grandpapas, 



78 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

■ — some of you with crowns like billiard-balls, — some 
in locks of sable silvered, and some of silver sabled, 
— do you remember, as you doze over this, those 
after-dinners at the Trois Freres, when the Scotch- 
plaided snuff-box went round, and the dry Lundy- 
Foot tickled its way along into our happy sensoria? 
Then it was that the Chambertin or the Clos Yougeot 
came in, slumbering in its straw cradle. And one 
among you, — do you remember how he would sit 
dreaming over his Burgundy, and tinkle his fork 
against the sides of the bubble-like glass, saying that 
he was hearing the cow-bells as he used to hear them, 
when the deep-breathing kine came home at twilight 
from the huckleberry pasture, in the old home a 
thousand leagues towards the sunset?] 

Ah me! what strains and strophes of unwritten 
verse pulsate through my soul when I open a certain 
closet in the ancient house where I was born ! On its 
shelves used to lie bundles of sweet-marjoram and 
pennyroyal and lavender and mint and catnip ; there 
apples were stored until their seeds should grow black, 
which happy period there were sharp little milk-teeth 
always ready to anticipate ; there peaches lay in the 
dark, thinking of the sunshine they had lost, until, 
like the hearts of saints who dream of heaven in their 
sorrow, they grew fragrant as the breath of angels. 
The odorous echo of a score of dead summers lingers 
yet in those dim recesses. 

— Do I remember Byron's line about " striking the 
electric chain " ? — To be sure I do. I sometimes 
think the less the hint that stirs the automatic ma- 
chinery of association, the more easily this moves us. 
What can be more trivial than that old story of oj)en- 
ing the folio Shakespeare that used to lie in some an- 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 79 

cient English hall and finding the flakes of Christmas 
pastry between its leaves, shut up in them perhaps a 
hundred years ago? And, lo ! as one looks on these 
poor relics o£ a bygone generation, the universe changes 
in the twinkling of an eye ; old George the Second is 
back again, and the elder Pitt is coming into power, 
and General Wolfe is a fine, promising young man.^ 
and over the Channel they are pulling the Sieur Da- 
miens to pieces with wild horses, and across the Atlan- 
tic the Indians are tomahawking Hirams and Jona« 
thans and eJonases at Fort William Henry ; all the 
dead people who have been in the dust so long — 
even to the stout-armed cook that made the pastry 
— are alive again ; the planet unwinds a hundred of 
its luminous coils, and the precession of the equinoxes 
is retraced on the dial of heaven ! And all this for a 
bit of pie-crust ! 

— I will thank you for that pie, — said the pro- 
voking young fellow whom I have named repeatedly* 
He looked at it for a moment, and put his hands to 
his eyes as if moved. — I was thinking, — he said in- 
distinctly — 

— How ? What is 't ? — said our landlady. 

— I was thinking — said he — who was king of 
England when this old pie was baked, — and it made 
me feel bad to think how long he must have been 
dead. 

[Our landlady is a decent body, poor, and a widow 
of course ; cela va sans dire. She told me her story 
once ; it was as if a grain of corn that had been 
ground and bolted had tried to individualize itself by 
a special narrative. There was the w^ooing and the 
wedding, — the start in life, — the disappointment, — 
the children she had buried, — the struggle against 



80 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

fate, — the dismantling of life, first of its small lux- 
uries, and then of its comforts — the broken spirits, — 
the altered character of the one on whom she leaned, 
— and at last the death that came and drew the black 
curtain between her and all her earthly hopes. 

I never laughed at my landlady after she had told 
me her story, but I often cried, — not those pattering 
tears that run off the eaves upon our neighbors' 
grounds, the stillicidium of seK-conscious sentiment, 
but those which steal noiselessly through their con- 
duits until they reach the cisterns lying round about 
the heart ; those tears that we weep inwardly with un- 
changing features ; — such I did shed for her often 
when the imps of the boarding-house Inferno tugged 
at her soul with their red-hot pincers.] 

Young man, — I said — the pasty you speak lightly 
of is not old, but courtesy to those who labor to serve 
us, especially if they are of the weaker sex, is very 
old, and yet well worth retaining. May I recommend 
to you the following caution, as a guide, whenever you 
are dealing with a woman, or an artist, or a poet, — if 
you are handling an editor or politician, it is superflu- 
ous advice. I take it from the back of one of those 
little French toys which contain pasteboard figures 
moved by a small running stream of fine sand ; Ben- 
jamin Franklin will translate it for you : " Quoiqu^- 
elle soit tres solidement montee^ il faut ne pas bru- 
TALISER la machiiie.^^ — I will thank you for the pie, 
if you please. 

[I took more of it than was good for me, — as much 
as 85°, I should think, — and had an indigestion in 
consequence. While I was suffering from it, I wrote 
some sadly desponding poems, and a theological essay 
which took a very melancholy view of creation. When 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 81 

I got better I labelled them all " Pie-crust," and laid 
them by as scarecrows and solemn warnings. I have 
a number of books on my shelves which I should like 
to label with some such title ; but, as they have great 
names on their title-pages, — Doctors of Divinity, 
some of them, — it would n't do.] 

— My friend, the Professor, whom I have men- 
tioned to you once or twice, told me yesterday that 
somebody had been abusing him in some of the jour- 
nals of his calling. I told him that I did n't doubt he 
deserved it ; that I hoped he did deserve a little abuse 
occasionally, and would for a number of years to come ; 
that nobody could do anything to make his neighbors 
wiser or better without being liable to abuse for it ; 
especially that people hated to have their little mis- 
takes made fun of, and perhaps he had been doing 
something of the kind. — The Professor smiled. — 
Now, said I, hear what I am going to say. It will not 
take many years to bring you to the period of life 
when men, at least the majority of writing and talk- 
ing men, do nothing but praise. Men, like peaches 
and pears, grow sweet a little while before they begin 
to decay. I don't know what it is, — whether a spon- 
taneous change, mental or bodily, or whether it is 
thorough experience of the thanklessness of critical 
honesty, — but it is a fact, that most writers, except 
sour and unsuccessful ones, get tired of finding fault 
at about the time when they are beginning to grow 
old. As a general thing, I would not give a great 
deal for the fair words of a critic, if he is himseK an 
author, over fifty years of age. At thirty we are all 
tr}' ing to cut our names in big letters upon the walls of 
this tenement of life ; twenty years later we have 
carved it, or shut up our jack-knives. Then we are 



82 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

ready to help others, and more anxious not to hinder 
any, because nobody's elbows are in our way. So I 
am glad you have a little life left; you will be sac- 
charine enough in a few years. 

— Some of the softening effects of advancing age 
have struck me very much in what I have heard or 
seen here and elsewhere. I just now spoke of the 
sweetening process that authors undergo. Do you 
know that in the gradual passage from maturity to 
helplessness the harshest characters sometimes have a 
period in which they are gentle and placid as young 
children ? I have heard it said, but I cannot be sponsor 
for its truth, that the famous chieftain, Lochiel, was 
rocked in a cradle like a baby, in his old age. An 
old man, whose studies had been of the severest schol- 
astic kind, used to love to hear little nursery-stories 
read over and over to him. One who saw the Duke 
of Wellington in his last years describes him as very 
gentle in his aspect and demeanor. I remember a 
person of singularly stern and lofty bearing who be- 
came remarkably gracious and easy in all liis ways in 
the later period of his life. 

And that leads me to say that men often remind me 
of pears in their way of coming to maturity. Some 
are ripe at twenty, like human Jargonelles, and must 
be made the most of, for their day is soon over. Some 
come into their perfect condition late, like the autumn 
kinds, and they last better than the summer fruit. 
And some, that, like the Winter-Nelis, have been hard 
and uninviting until all the rest have had their season, 
get their glow and perfume long after the frost and 
snow have done their worst with the orchards. Be- 
ware of rash criticisms ; the rough and astringent fruit 
you condemn may be an autumn or a ^vinter pear, and 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 83 

that which you picked up beneath the same bough in 
August may have been only its worm-eaten windfalls. 
Milton was a Saint-Germain with a graft of the rose- 
ate Early-Catherine. Rich, juicy, lively, fragrant, 
russet skinned old Chaucer was an Easter-Beurre ; 
the buds of a new smnmer were swelling when he 
ripened. 

— There is no power I envy so much, — said the 
divinity-student, — as that of seeing analogies and 
making comparisons. I don't understand how it is 
that some minds are continually coupling thoughts or 
objects that seem not in the least related to each other, 
until all at once they are put in a certain light and 
you wonder that you did not always see that they were 
as like as a pair of twins. It appears to me a sort of 
miracidous gift. 

[He is a rather nice young man, and I think has 
an appreciation of the higher mental qualities re- 
markable for one of his years and training. I try his 
head occasionally as housewives try eggs, — give it an 
intellectual shake and hold it up to the light, so to 
speak, to see if it has life in it, actual or potential, or 
only contains lifeless albumen.] 

You call it miraculous, — I replied, — tossing the 
expression with my facial eminence, a little smartly, I 
fear. — Two men are walking by the polyphloesboean 
ocean, one of them having a small tin cup with which 
he can scoop up a gill of sea-water when he will, and 
the other nothing but his hands, which will hardly 
hold water at all, — and you call the tin cup a mirac- 
ulous possession! It is the ocean that is the miracle, 
my infant apostle ! Nothing is clearer than that all 
things are in all things, and that just according to 
the intensity and extension of our mental being we 



84 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

shall see the many in the one and the one in the many. 
Did Sir Isaac think what he was saying when he made 
ibis speech about the ocean, — the child and the peb- 
bles, you know? Did he mean to speak slightingly of 
a pebble ? Of a spherical solid which stood sentinel 
over its compartment of space before the stone that be- 
came the pyramids had grown solid, and has watched 
it until now ! A body which knows all the currents of 
force that traverse the globe ; which holds by invisible 
threads to the ring of Saturn and the belt of Orion ! 
A body from the contemplation of which an archangel 
could infer the entire inorganic universe as the sim- 
plest of corollaries ! A throne of the all-pervading 
Deity, who has guided its every atom since the rosary 
of heaven was strung with beaded stars ! 

So, — to return to our walk by the ocean, — if all 
that poetry has dreamed, all that insanity has raved, 
all that maddening narcotics have driven through the 
brains of men, or smothered passion nursed in the 
fancies of women, — if the dreams of colleges and 
convents and boarding-schools, — if every human feel- 
ing that sighs, or smiles, or curses, or shrieks, or 
groans, should bring all their innumerable images, 
such as come with every hurried heart-beat, — the 
epic which held them all, though its letters filled the 
zodiac, would be but a cupful from the infinite ocean 
of similitudes and analogies that rolls through the uni- 
verse. 

[The divinity-student honored himself by the way 
in which he received this. He did not swallow it at 
once, neither did he reject it ; but he took it as a 
pickerel takes the bait, and carried it off with him to 
his hole (in the fourth story) to deal with at his 
leisure.] 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 85 

— Here is another remark made for his especial 
benefit. — There is a natural tendency in many per- 
sons to run their adjectives together in triads^ as I 
have heard them called, — thus : He was honorable, 
courteous, and brave ; she was gracefid, pleasing, and 
virtuous. Dr. Johnson is famous for this ; I think it 
was Bulwer who said you could separate a paper in 
the " Rambler " into three distinct essays. Many of 
our writers show the same tendency, — my friend, the 
Professor, especially. Some think it is in humble im- 
itation of Johnson, — some that it is for the sake of 
the stately sound only. I don't think they get to the 
bottom of it. It is, I susjject, an instinctive and in- 
voluntary effort of the mind to present a thought or 
image with the three dimensions which belong to every 
solid, — an unconscious handling of an idea as if it 
had length, breadth, and thickness. It is a great deal 
easier to say this than to prove it, and a great deal 
easier to dispute it than to disprove it. But mind 
this : the more we observe and study, the wider we 
find the range of the automatic and instinctive princi- 
ples in body, mind, and morals, and the narrower the 
limits of the self -determining conscious movement. 

— I have often seen, piano-forte players and singers 
make such strange motions over their instruments or 
song-books that I wanted to laugh at them. " Where 
did our friends pick up all these fine ecstatic airs ? " I 
would say to myself. Then I would remember My 
Lady in "Marriage a la Mode," and amuse myself 
vdth thinking how affectation was the same thing in 
Hogarth's time and in our own. But one day I bought 
me a Canary-bird and hung him up in a cage at my 
window. By-and-by he found himself at home, and 
began to pipe his little tunes ; and there he was, sure 



86 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

enough, swimming and waving about, with all the 
droopings and liftings and languishing side-turnings 
of the head that I had laughed at. And now I should 
like to ask. Who taught him all this ? ■ — and me, 
through him, that the foolish head was not the one 
swinging itself from side to side and bowing and nod- 
ding over the music, but that other which was passing 
its shallow and self-satisfied judgment on a creature 
made of finer clay than the frame which carried that 
same head upon its shoulders ? 

— Do you want an image of the human will or the 
self -determining principle, as compared with its pre-ar- 
ranged and impassable restrictions ? A drop of water, 
imprisoned in a crystal ; you may see such a one in 
any mineralogical collection. One little fluid particle 
in the crystalline prism of the solid universe ! 

— Weaken moral obligations ? — No, not weaken 
but define them. When I preach that sermon I 
spoke of the other day, I shall have to lay down some 
principles not fully recognized in some of your text- 
books. 

I should have to begin with one most formidable 
preliminary. You saw an article the other day in one 
of the journals, perhaps, in which some old Doctor or 
other said quietly that patients were very apt to be 
fools and cowards. But a great many of the clergy- 
man's patients are not only fools and cowards, but also 
Uars. 

[Immense sensation at the table. — Sudden retire- 
ment of the angular female in oxydated bombazine. 
Movement of adhesion — as they say in the Chamber 
of Deputies — on the part of the young fellow they 
call John. Falling of the old-gentleman-opposite's 
lower jaw — (gravitation is beginning to get the bet- 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 87 

ter of him.) Our landlady to Benjamin Franklin, 
briskly, — Go to school right off, there 's a good boy ! 
Schoolmistress curious, — takes a quick glance at di- 
vinity-student. Divinity-student slightly flushed ; 
draws his shoulders back a little, as if a big: false- 
hood, — or truth, — had hit him in the forehead. My- 
self calm.] 

— I should not make such a speech as that, you 
know, without having pretty substantial indorsers to 
fall back upon, in case my credit should be disputed. 
Will you run up-stairs, Benjamin Franklin (for B. 
F. had not gone right off, of course), and bring down 
a small volume from the left upper corner of the right- 
hand shelves? 

[Look at the precious little black, ribbed backed, 
clean-typed, vellum-papered 32mo. " Desiderii Eras- 
mi CoLLOQUiA. Amstelodami. Typis Ludovici El- 
zevirii. 1650." Various names written on title-jjage. 
Most conspicuous this : Gul. Cookeson, E. Coll. Omn. 
Anim. 1725. Oxon. 

— O William Cookeson, of All-Souls College, Ox- 
ford, — then writing as I now write, — now in the 
dust, where I shall lie, — is this line all that remains 
to thee of earthly remembrance? Thy name is at 
least once more spoken by living men ; — is it a pleas- 
ure to thee? Thou shalt share with me my little 
draught of immortality, — its week, its month, its 
year, — whatever it may be, — and then we will go 
together into the solemn archives of Oblivion's Uncat- 
alogued Library !] 

— If you think I have used rather strong language, 
I shall have to read something to you out of the book 
of this keen and witty scholar, — the great Erasmus, 
— who " laid the egg of the Reformation which Lu« 



88 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

ther hatched." Oh, you never read his Naufragium^ 
or " Shipwreck," did 3^011? 0£ course not ; for, if you 
had, I don't think you woidd have given me credit, — 
or discredit, — for entire originality in that speech of 
mine. That men are cowards in the contemplation of 
futurity he illustrates by the extraordinary antics of 
many on board the sinking vessel ; that they are fools, 
by their praying to the sea, and making promises to 
bits of wood from the true cross, and all manner of 
similar nonsense ; that they are fools, cowards, and 
liars all at once, by this story : I will put it into rough 
English for you. — "I could n't help laughing to hear 
one fellow bawling out, so that he might be sure to be 
heard, a promise to Saint Christopher of Paris, — the 
monstrous statue in the great church there, — that he 
would give him a wax taper as big as himself. ' Mind 
what you promise ! ' said an acquaintance who stood 
near him, poking him with his elbow ; ' you could n't 
pay for it, if you sold all your things at auction.' 
' Hold your tongue, you donkey ! ' said the fellow, — • 
but softly, so that Saint Christopher should not hear 
him, — ' do you think I 'm in earnest ? If I once 
get my foot on dry ground, catch me giving him so 
much as a tallow candle ! ' " 

Now, therefore, remembering that those who have 
been loudest in their talk about the great subject of 
which we were speaking have not necessarily been 
wise, brave, and true men, but, on the contrary, have 
very often been wanting in one or two or all of the 
qualities these words imply, I should expect to find a 
good many doctrines current in the schools which I 
should be obliged to call foolish, cowardly, and false. 

— So you would abuse other people's beliefs. Sir, 
and yet not tell us your own creed ! — said the divio? 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 89 

ity-student, coloring up with a spirit for which I liked 
him all the better. 

— I have a creed, — I replied ; — none better, and 
none shorter. It is told in two words, — the two first 
of the Paternoster. And when I say these words I 
mean them. And when I compared the human will 
to a drop in a crystal, and said I meant to define 
moral obligations, and not weaken them, this was 
what I intended to express : that the fluent, self-deter- 
mining power of hiunan beings is a very strictly lim- 
ited agency in the universe. The chief planes of its 
enclosing solid are, of course, organization, education, 
condition. Organization may reduce the power of the 
will to nothing, as in some idiots ; and from this zero 
the scale mounts upwards by slight gradations. Edu- 
cation is only second to nature. Imagine all the in- 
fants born this year in Boston and Timbuctoo to 
change places ! Condition does less, but " Give me 
neither poverty nor riches " was the prayer of Agur, 
and with good reason. If there is any improvement 
in modern theology, it is in getting out of the region 
of pure abstractions and taldng these every-day work- 
ing forces into account. The great theological ques- 
tion now heaving and throbbing in the minds of 
Christian men is this : — 

No, I won't talk about these things now. My re- 
marks might be repeated, and it would give my 
friends pain to see with what personal incivilities I 
should be visited. Besides, what business has a mere 
boarder to be talking about such things at a break- 
fast-table ? Let him make puns. To be sure, he was 
brought up among the Christian fathers, and learned 
his alphabet out of a quarto " Concilium Tridenti- 
num." He has also heard many thousand theological 



90 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

lectures by men of various denominations ; and it is 
not at all to the credit of these teachers, if he is not fit 
by this time to express an opinion on theological mat- 
ters. 

I know well enough that there are some of you who 
had a great deal rather see me stand on my head than 
use it for any purpose of thought. Does not my 
friend, the Professor, receive at least two letters a 

week, requesting him to , 

— on the strength of some youthful antic of his, which, 
no doubt, authorizes the intelligent constituency of 
autograph-hunters to address him as a harlequin ? 

— Well, I can't be savage with you for wanting to 
laugh, and I like to make you laugh well enough, when 
I can. But then observe this : if the sense of the ri- 
diculous is one side of an impressible nature, it is very 
well ; but if that is all there is in a man, he had bet- 
ter have been an ape at once, and so have stood at 
the head of his profession. Laughter and tears are 
meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of 
sensibility; one is wind-power, and the other water- 
power ; that is all. I have often heard the Professor 
talk about hysterics as being Nature's cleverest illus- 
tration of the reciprocal convertibility of the two 
states of which these acts are the manifestations. But 
you may see it every day in children ; and if you want 
to choke with stifled tears at sight of the transition, as 
it shows itself in older years, go and see Mr. Blake 
play Jesse Rural. 

It is a very dangerous thing for a literary man to 
indulge his love for the ridiculous. People laugh with 
him just so long as he amuses them ; but if he at- 
tempts to be serious, they must still have their laugh, 
and so they laugh at him. There is in addition, how- 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 91 

ever, a deeper reason for this than would at first ap- 
pear. Do you know that you feel a little superior to 
every man who makes you laugh, whether by making 
faces or verses? Are you aware that you have a 
pleasant sense of patronizing him, when you conde^ 
scend so far as to let him turn somersets, literal or lifc^ 
erary, for your royal delight ? Now if a man can only 
be allowed to stand on a dais, or raised platform, and 
look down on his neighbor who is exerting his talent 
for him, oh, it is all right ! — first-rate performance ! 
— and all the rest of the fine phrases. But if all at 
once the performer asks the gentleman to come upon 
the floor, and, stepping upon the platform, begins to 
talk down at him, — ah, that was n't in the programme ! 
I have never forgotten what happened when Syd- 
ney Smith — who, as everybody knows, was an ex 
ceedingly sensible man, and a gentleman, every inch 
of him — ventured to preach a sermon on the Duties 
of Royalty. The " Quarterly," " so savage and tar- 
tarly," came down upon him in the most contempt- 
uous style, as " a joker of jokes," a " diner-out of the 
first water," in one of his own phrases ; sneering at 
him, insidting him, as nothing but a toady of a court, 
snealdng behind the anonymous, would ever have been 
mean enough to do to a man of his position and 
genius, or to any decent person even. — If I were giv- 
ing advice to a young fellow of talent, with two or 
three facets to his mind, I would tell him by all means 
to keep his wit in the backgromid until after he had 
made a reputation by his more solid qualities. And 
so to an actor : Hamlet first, and Bob Logic after- 
wards, if you like ; but don't think, as they say poor 
Liston used to, that people will be ready to allow that 
you can do anything great with MacbetNs dagger 



92 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

after flourishing about with Paul Pry's umbrella. Do 
you know, too, that the majority of men look upon all 
who challenge their attention, — for a while, at least, 
— as beggars, and nuisances ? They always try to 
get off as cheaply as they can ; and the cheapest of all 
things they can give a literary man — pardon the for- 
lorn pleasantry ! — is the funny-howQ. That is all 
very well so far as it goes, but satisfies no man, and 
makes a good many angry, as I told you on a former 
occasion. 

— Oh, indeed, no ! — I am not ashamed to make 
you laugh, occasionally. I think I could read you 
something I have in my desk which would probably 
make you smile. Perhaps I will read it one of these 
days, if you are patient with me when I am senti- 
mental and reflective ; not just now. The ludicrous 
has its place in the universe ; it is not a human in- 
vention, but one of the Divine ideas, illustrated in the 
practical jokes of kittens and monkeys long before 
Aristophanes or Shakspeare. How curious it is that 
we always consider solemnity and the absence of all 
gay surprises and encounter of wits as essential to the 
idea of the future life of those w^hom we thus deprive 
of half their faculties and then call blessed I There 
are not a few who, even in this life, seem to be pre- 
paring themselves for that smileless eternity to which 
they look forward, by banishing all gayety from their 
hearts and all joyousness from their countenances. I 
meet one such in the street not unfrequently, a person 
of intelligence and education, but who gives me (and 
all that he passes) such a rayless and chilling look of 
recognition, — something as if he were one of Heaven's 
assessors, come down to "doom" every acquaintance 
he met, — that I have sometimes begun ta sneeze on 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 93 

the spot, and gone home with a violent cold, dating 
from that instant. I don't doubt he would cut his 
kitten's tail off, if he caught her playing with ito 
Please tell me, who taught her to play with it ? 

No, no ! — give me a chance to talk to you, my fel- 
low-boarders, and you need not be afraid that I shall 
have any scruples about entertaining you, if I can do 
it, as well as giving you some of my serious thoughts, 
and perhaps my sadder fancies. I know nothing in 
English or any other literature more admirable than 
that sentiment of Sir Thomas Browne " Every man 

TRULY LIVES, SO LONG AS HE ACTS HIS NATURE, OK 
SOME VTAY MAKES GOOD THE FACULTIES OF HIM- 
SELF." 

I find the great thing in this world is not so much 
where we stand, as in what direction we are moving : 
To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes 
with the wind and sometimes against it, — but we 
must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor. There is 
one very sad thing in old friendships, to every mind 
which is really moving onward. It is this : that one 
cannot help using his early friends as the seaman uses 
the log, to mark his progress. Every now and then 
we throw an old schoolmate over the stern with a 
string of thought tied to him, and look, — I am afraid 
with a kind of luxurious and sanctimonious compas- 
sion, — to see the rate at which the string reels off, 
while he lies there bobbing up and down, poor fellow ! 
and we are dashing along with the white foam and 
bright sparkle at our bows ; — the ruffled bosom of 
prosperity and progress, with a sprig of diamonds 
stuck in it ! But this is only the sentimental side of 
the matter ; for grow we must, if we outgrow all that 
we love. 



94: THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Don't misunderstand that metaphor of heaving the 
log, I beg you. It is merely a smart way of saymg 
that we cannot avoid measuring our rate of move- 
ment by those with whom we have long been in the 
habit of comparing ourselves ; and when they once 
become stationary, we can get our reckoning from 
them with painful accuracy. We see just Avhat we 
were when they were our peers, and can strike the 
balance between that and whatever we may feel our- 
selves to be now. No doubt we may sometimes be 
mistaken. If we change our last simile to that very 
old and familiar one of a fleet leaving the harbor and 
sailing in company for some distant region, we can 
get what we want out of it. There is one of our com- 
panions ; — her streamers were torn into rags before 
she had got into the open sea, then by and by her 
sails blew out of the ropes one after another, the waves 
swept her deck, and as night came on we left her a 
seeming wreck, as we flew under our pyramid of can- 
vas. But lo ! at dawn she is still in sight, — it may 
be in advance of us. Some deep ocean-current has 
been moving her on, strong, but silent, — yes, stronger 
than these noisy winds that puff our sails until they 
are swollen as the cheeks of jubilant cherubim. And 
when at last the black steam-tug with the skeleton 
arms, which comes out of the mist sooner or later and 
takes us all in tow, grapples her and goes off panting 
and groaning with her, it is to that harbor where all 
wrecks are refitted and where, alas ! we, towering in * 
our pride, may never come. 

So you will not think I mean to speak lightly of old 
friendships, because we cannot help instituting com- 
parisons between our present and former selves by the 
aid of those who were what we were, but are not what 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLEc 95 

we are. Nothing strikes one more, in the race of life, 
than to see how many give out in the first half of the 
course. " Commencement day " always reminds me 
of the start for the "Derby," when the beautiful high- 
bred three-year-olds of the season are brought up for 
trial. That day is the start, and life is the race. Here 
we are at Cambridge, and a class is just " graduating." 
Poor Harry ! he was to have been there too, but he 
has paid forfeit ; step out here into the grass behind 
the church ; ah ! there it is : — 

" HUNC LAPIDEM POSUERUNT 
SOCII MCERENTES." 

But this is the start, and here they are, — coats bright 
as silk, and manes as smooth as eau lustrale can make 
them. Some of the best of the colts are pranced 
round, a few minutes each, to show their paces. What 
is that old gentleman crying about ? and the old lady 
by him, and the three girls, what are they all covering 
their eyes for ? Oh, that is their colt which has just 
been trotted up on the stage. Do they really think 
those little thin legs can do anything in such a slash- 
ing sweepstakes as is coming off in these next forty 
years ? Oh, this terrible gift of second-sight that 
comes to some of us when we begin to look through 
the silvered rings of the arcus senilis ! 

Ten years gone. First turn in the race. A few 
broken down ; two or three bolted. Several show in 
advance of the ruck. Cassock^ a black colt, seems to 
be ahead of the rest ; those black colts commonly get 
the start, I have noticed, of the others, in the first 
quarter. Meteor has pulled up. 

Twenty years. Second corner turned. Cassoch 
has dropped from the front, and Judex^ an iron-gray, 



96 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

has the lead. But look ! how they have thinned out ! 
Down flat, — five, — six, — how many ? They lie 
still enough ! they will not get up again in this race, 
be very sure ! And the rest of them, what a " tailing 
off " ! Anybody can see who is going to win, — per- 
haps. 

Thirty years. Third corner turned. Dives, bright 
sorrel, ridden by the fellow in a yellow jacket, begins 
to make play fast ; is getting to be the favorite with 
many. But who is that other one that has been length- 
ening his stride from the first, and now shows close up 
to the front ? Don't you remember the quiet brown 
colt Asteroid, with the star in his forehead? That is 
he ; he is one of the sort that lasts ; look out for him ! 
The black " colt," as we used to call him, is in the 
background, taking it easily in a gentle trot. There 
is one they used to call the Filly, on account of a cer- 
tain feminine air he had ; well up, you see ; the Filly 
is not to be despised, my boy ! 

Forty years. More dropping off, — but places much 
as before. 

Fifty years. Race over. All that are on the 
course are coming in at a walk; no more running. 
Who is ahead ? Ahead ? What ! and the winning- 
post a slab of white or gray stone standing out from 
that turf where there is no more jockeying or strain- 
ing for victory ! Well, the world marks their places 
in its betting-book ; but be sure that these matter 
very little, if they have run as well as they knew 
how! 

— Did I not say to you a little while ago that the 
universe swam in an ocean of similitudes and analo- 
gies ? I will not quote Cowley, or Burns, or Words- 
worth, just now, to show you what thoughts were sug- 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 97 

geated to them by the simplest natural objects, such as 
a llower or a leaf ; but I will read you a few lines, if 
you do not object, suggested by looking at a section of 
one of those chambered shells to which is given the 
name of Pearly Nautilus. We need not trouble our- 
selves about the distmction between this and the Paper 
Nautilus, the Argonauta of the ancients. The name 
applied to both shows that each has long been com- 
pared to a ship, as you may see more fully in Web- 
ster's Dictionary, or the '' Encyclopaedia," to which 
he refers. If you will look into Roget's Bridgewater 
Treatise, you will find a figure of one of these shells 
and a section of it. The last will show you the series 
of enlarging compartments successively dwelt in by the 
animal that inhabits the shell, which is built in a 
widening spiral. Can you find no lesson in this ? 

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS.* 

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, 

Sails the unshadowed main, — 

The venturous bark that flings 
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings 
In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings,* 

And coral reefs lie bare. 
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. 

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl ; 
Wrecked is the ship of pearl ! 

° I have now and then found a naturalist who still worried 
over the distinction between the Pearly Nautilus and the Paper 
Nautilus, or Argonauta. As the stories about both are mere 
fables, attaching to the Physalia, or Portuguese man-of-war, as 
well as to these two molluscs, it seems over-nice to quarrel with 
the poetical handling of a fiction sufficiently justified by the 
name commonly applied to the ship of pearl as well as the ship 
of paper. 



98 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

And every chambered cell, 
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, 
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, 

Before thee lies revealed, — 
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed! 

Year after year beheld the silent toil 

That spread his lustrous coil; 

Still, as the spiral grew, 
He left the past year's dwelling for the new, 
Stole with soft step its shining archway through, 

Built up its idle door, 
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no mare^ 

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, 

Child of the wandering sea, 

Cast from her lap forlorn! 
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born 
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn ! 

While on mine ear it rings. 
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings : 

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 

As the swift seasons roll ! 

Leave thy low-vaulted past ! / 

Let each new temple, nobler than the last, / 

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, / 

Till thou at length art free, / 

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting seal 



V. '' 

A LYRIC conception — my friend, tlie Poet, said ^ 
hits me like a bullet in the forehead. I have often 
had the blood drop from my cheeks when it struck, 
and felt that I turned as white as death. Then comes 
a creeping as of centipedes running down the spine, 
— then a gasp and a great jump of the heart, — then 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 99 

a sudden flush and a beating in the vessels of the 
head, — then a long sigh, — and the poem is written. 

It is an impromptu, I suppose, then, if you write it 
so suddenly, — I replied. 

No, — said he, — far from it. I said written, but I 
did not say coined. Every such poem has a soul and 
a body, and it is the body of it, or the copy, that men 
read and publishers pay for. The soul of it is born 
in an instant in the poet's soul. It comes to him a 
thought, tangled in the meshes of a few sweet words, 
— words that have loved each other from the cradle 
of the language, but have never been wedded until 
now. Whether it will ever fully embody itself in a 
bridal train of a dozen stanzas or not is uncertain ; 
but it exists potentially from the instant that the poet 
turns pale with it. It is enough to stun and scare 
anybody, to have a hot thought come crashing into his 
brain, and ploughing up those parallel ruts where the 
wagon trains of common ideas were jogging along in 
their regular sequences of association. No wonder the 
ancient, made the poetical impulse wholly external. 
^^viv aeiSe ©ea • Goddcss, — Muse, — diviuc afflatus, 
— something outside always, /never wrote any verses 
worth reading. I can't. I am too stupid. If I ever 
copied any that were worth reading, I was only a 
medium. 

[I was talking all this time to our boarders, you un- 
derstand, — teUing them what this poet told me. The 
company listened rather attentively, I thought, consid= 
ering the literary character of the remarks.] 

The old gentleman opposite all at once asked me if 
I ever read anything better than Pope's " Essay on 
Man"? Had I ever perused McFingal? He was 
fond of poetry when he was a boy, — his mother taught 



100 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

him to say many little pieces, ■ — he remembered one 
beautiful hymn ; — and the old gentleman began, in 
a clear, loud voice, for his years, — 

*' The spacious firmament on high, 
With all the blue ethereal sky, 
And spangled heavens," — 

He stopped, as if startled by our silence, and a faint 
flush ran up beneath the thin white hairs that fell 
upon his cheek. As I looked round, I was reminded 
of a show I once saw at the Museum, — the Sleeping 
Beauty, I think they called it. The old man's sud- 
den breaking out in this way turned every face to- 
wards him, and each kept his posture as if changed to 
stone. Our Celtic Bridget, or Biddy, is not a fool- 
ish fat scullion to burst out crying for a sentiment. 
She is of the serviceable, red-handed, broad-and-high- 
shouldered type; one of those imported female ser- 
vants who are known in public by their amorphous 
style of person, their stoop forwards, and a headlong, 
and as it were precipitous walk, — the waist plunging 
downwards into the rocking pelvis at every heavy foot- 
fall. Bridget, constituted for action, not for emotion, 
was about to deposit a plate heaped with something 
upon the table, when I saw the coarse arm stretched 
by my shoulder arrested, — motionless as the arm of 
a terra-cotta caryatid ; she could n't set the plate down 
while the old gentleman was speaking! 

He was quite silent after this, still wearing the 
slight flush on his cheek. Don't ever think the po- 
etry is dead in an old man because his forehead is 
wrinkled, or that his manhood has left him when his 
hand trembles! If they ever were there, they are 
there still ! 

By and by we got talking again. — Does a poet 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 101 

love the verses written through him, do you think, 
Sir ? — said the divinity-student. 

So long as they are warm from his mind, — carry 
any of his animal heat about them, / know he loves 
them, — I answered. When they have had time to 
cool, he is more indifferent. 

A good deal as it is with buckwheat cakes, — said 
the young fellow whom they call John. 

The last words, only, reached the ear of the eco- 
nomically organized female in black bombazine. — 
Buckwheat is skerce and high, — she remarked. 
[Must be a poor relation sponging on our landlady 
— pays nothing, — so she must stand by the guns and 
be ready to repel boarders.] 

I liked the turn the conversation had taken, for I 
had some things I wanted to say, and so, after waiting 
a minute, I began again. — I don't think the poems 
I read you sometimes can be fairly appreciated, given 
.to you as they are in the green state. 

— You don't know what I mean by the green state f 
Well, then, I will tell you. Certain things are good 
for nothing until they have been kept a long while ; 
and some are good for nothing until they have been 
long kept and used. Of the first, wine is the illustri- 
ous and immortal example. Of those which must be 
kept and used I will name three, — meerschaum pipes, 
violins, and poems. The meerschaum is but a poor 
affair until it has burned a thousand offerings to the 
cloud-compelling deities. It comes to us without com- 
plexion or flavor, — born of the sea-foam, like Aphro- 
dite, but colorless as pallida Mors herself. The fire 
is lighted in its central shrine, and gradually the juices 
which the broad leaves of the Great Vegetable had 
sucked up from an acre and curdled into a drachm are 



102 THE AUTOCKAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

diffused through its thirsting pores. First a discolora- 
tion, then a stain, and at last a rich, glowing, umber 
tint spreading over the whole surface. Nature true to 
her old brown autumnal hue, you see, — as true in the 
fire of the meerschaum as in the sunshine of October ! 
And then the cumulative wealth of its fragrant rem- 
iniscences ! he who inhales its vapors takes a thousand 
whiffs in a single breath ; and one cannot touch it 
without awakening the old joys that hang around it as 
the smell of flowers clings to the dresses of the daugh^ 
ters of the house of Farina ! 

[Don't think I use a meerschaum myself, for / do 
not^ though I have owned a calumet since my child- 
hood, which from a naked Pict (of the Mohawk spe- 
cies) my grandsire won, together with a tomahawk 
and beaded knife-sheath ; paying for the lot with a 
bullet-mark on his right cheek. On the maternal side 
I inherit the loveliest silver-mounted tobacco-stopper 
you ever saw. It is a little box-wood Triton, carved 
with charming liveliness and truth. I have often com- 
pared it to a figure in Raphael's " Triiunph of Gala- 
tea." It came to me in an ancient shagreen case, — 
how old it is I do not know, — but it must have been 
made since Sir Walter Raleigh's time. If you are 
curious, you shall see it any day. Neither wiU I pre- 
tend that I am so unused to the more perishable 
smoking contrivance that a few whiffs would make 
me feel as if I lay in a ground-swell on the Bay of 
Biscay. I am not unacquainted with that fusiform, 
spiral-wound bundle of chopped stems and miscellane- 
ous incombustibles, the cigar, so called, of the shops, 
— ' which to " draw " asks the suction-power of a nurs- 
ling infant Hercules, and to relish, the leathery palate 
of an old Silenus. I do not advise you, young man. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 103 

even if my illustration strike your fancy, to consecrate 
the flower of your life to painting the bowl of a pipe, 
for, let me assure you, the stain of a reverie-breeding 
narcotic may strike deeper than you think for. 1 
have seen the green leaf of early promise grow brown 
before its time under such Nicotian regimen, and 
tliought the umbered meerschaum was dearly bought 
at the cost of a brain enfeebled and a will enslaved.] 

Violins, too, — the sweet old Amati! — the divine 
Stradivarius ! Played on by ancient maestros until 
the bow-hand lost its power and the flying fingers 
stiffened. Bequeathed to the passionate young enthu- 
siast, who made it whisper his hidden love, and cry 
his inarticulate longings, and scream his untold ago- 
nies, and wail his monotonous despair. Passed from 
his dying hand to the cold virtuoso^ who let it slum- 
ber in its case for a generation, till, when his hoard 
was broken up, it came forth once more and rode the 
stormy symphonies of royal orchestras, beneath the 
rushing bow of their lord and leader. Into lonely 
prisons with improvident artists ; into convents from 
which arose, day and night, the holy hymns with 
which its tones were blended; and back again to 
orgies in which it learned to howl and laugh as if a 
legion of devils were shut up in it ; then again to the 
gentle dilettante who calmed it down with easy melo- 
dies until it answered him softly as in the days of the 
old maesti'os. And so given into our hands, its pores 
all full of music ; stained, like the meerschaum, 
through and through, with the concentrated hue and 
sweetness of all the harmonies which have kindled 
and faded on its strings. 

Now I tell you a poem must be kept and used^ like 
a meerschaum, or a violin. A poem is just as porous 



104 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

as the meerschaum ; — the more porous it is, the 
better. I mean to say that a genuine poem is capable 
of absorbing an indefinite amount of the essence of 
our own humanity, — its tenderness, its heroism, its 
regrets, its aspirations, so as to be gradually stained 
through with a divine secondary color derived from 
ourselves. So you see it must take time to bring the 
sentiment of a poem into harmony with our nature, by 
staining ourselves through every thought and image 
our being can penetrate. 

Then again as to the mere music of a new poem, 
why, who can expect anything more from that than 
from the music of a violin fresh from the maker's 
hands ? Now you know very well that there are no 
less than fifty-eight different pieces in a violin. These 
pieces are strangers to each other, and it takes a 
century, more or less, to make them thoroughly ac- 
quainted. At last they learn to vibrate in harmony 
and the instrument becomes an organic whole, as if it 
were a great seed-capsule which had grown from a 
garden-bed in Cremona, or elsewhere. Besides, the 
wood is juicy and full of sap for fifty years or so, but 
at the end of fifty or a hundred more gets tolerably 
dry and comparatively resonant. 

Don't you see that all this is just as true of a poem ? 
Counting each word as a piece, there are more pieces 
in an average copy of verses than in a violin. The 
poet has forced all these words together, and fastened 
them, and they don't understand it at first. But let 
the poem be repeated aloud and murmured over in 
the mind's muffled whisper often enough, and at 
length the parts become knit together in such absolute 
solidarity that you could not change a syllable without 
the whole world's crying out against you for meddling 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 105 

with the harmonious fabric. Observe, too, how the 
drying process takes place in the stuff of a poem just 
as in that of a violin. Here is a Tyrolese fiddle that 
is just coming to its hundredth birthday, — (Pedro 
Klauss, Tyroli, fecit, 1760), — the sap is pretty well 
out of it. And here is the song of an old poet whom 
Neaera cheated : — 

" Nox erat, et coelo fulgebat Luna sereno 
Inter minora sidera, 
Cum tu magnorum numen laesura deorum 
In verba jurabas mea." 

Don't you perceive the sonorousness of these old dead 
Latin phrases? Now I tell you that every word fresh 
from the dictionary brings with it a certain succu- 
lence ; and though I cannot expect the sheets of the 
" Pactolian," in which, as I told you, I sometimes 
print my verses, to get so dry as the crisp papyrus 
that held those words of Horatius Flaccus, yet you 
may be sure, that, while the sheets are damp, and 
while the lines hold their sap, you can't fairly judge 
of my performances, and that, if made of the true 
stuff, they will ring better after a while. 

[There was silence for a brief space, after my some- 
what elaborate exposition of these self-evident analo- 
gies. Presently a person turned towards me — I do 
not choose to designate the individual — and said that 
he rather expected my pieces had given pretty good 
" sahtisfahction." — I had, up to this moment, consid- 
ered this complimentary phrase as sacred to the use 
of secretaries of lyceums, and, as it has been usually 
accompanied by a small pecuniary testimonial, have 
acquired a certaia relish for this moderately tepid and 
unstimulating expression of enthusiasm. But as a re- 



106 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. ^ 

ward for gratuitous services I confess I thought it a 
little below that blood-heat standard which a man's 
breath ought to have, whether silent, or vocal and ar- 
ticulate. I waited for a favorable opportunity, how- 
ever, before making the remarks which follow.] 

— There are single expressions, as I have told you 
already, that fix a man's position for you before you 
have done shaking hands with him. Allow me to ex- 
pand a little. There are several things, very slight 
in themselves, yet implying other things not so unim- 
portant. Thus, your French servant has devaUne 
your premises and got caught. Excusez^ says the 
sergent-de-ville^ as he politely relieves him of his 
upper garments and displays his bust in the full day- 
light. Good shoulders enough, — a little marked, — 
traces of smallpox, perhaps, — but white. . . . Crac I 
from the sergent-de-ville's broad palm on the white 
shoulder! Now look! Vogue la galere! Out 
comes the big red Y — mark of the hot iron ; — he had 
blistered it out pretty nearly, — had n't he ? — the old 
rascal YOLEUR, branded in the galleys at Mar- 
seilles ! [Don't ! What if he has got something like 
this ? — nobody supposes I invented such a story.] 

My man John, who used to drive two of those six 
equine females which I told you I had owned, — for, 
look you, my friends, simple though I stand here, I 
am one that has been driven in his "kerridge," — not 
using that term, as liberal shepherds do, for any bat- 
tered old shabby-genteel go-cart which has more than 
one wheel, but meaning thereby a four-wheeled vehicle 
with a pole^ — my man John, I say, was a retired 
soldier. He retired unostentatiously, as many of Her 
Majesty's modest servants have done before and since. 
John told me, that when an officer thinks he recog- 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 107 

nizes one of these retiring heroes, and would know if 
he has really been in the service, that he may restore 
him, if possible, to a grateful country, he comes sud- 
denly upon him, and says, sharply, ^' Strap ! " If he 
has ever worn the shoulder-strap, he has learned the 
reprimand for its ill adjustment. The old word of 
command flashes through his muscles, and his hand 
goes up in an instant to the place where the strap 
used to be. 

[I was all the time preparing for my grand cou])^ 
you understand ; but I saw they were not quite ready 
for it, and so continued, — always in illustration of 
the general principle I had laid down.] 

Yes, odd things come out in ways that nobody 
thinks of. There was a legend, that, when the Dan- 
ish pirates made descents upon the English coast, 
they caught a few Tartars occasionally, in the shape 
of Saxons, who would not let them go, — on the con- 
trary, insisted on their staying, and, to make sure of 
it, treated them as Apollo treated Marsyas, or as Bar- 
tholinus has treated a fellow-creature in his title-page, 
and, having divested them of the one essential and 
perfectly fitting garment, indispensable in the mildest 
climates, nailed the same on the church-door as we do 
the banns of marriage, in terrorem. 

[There was a laugh at this among some of the 
young folks ; but as I looked at our landlady, I saw 
that " the water stood in her eyes," as it did in Chris- 
tiana's when the interpreter asked her about the spi- 
der, and I fancied, but was n't quite sure that the 
schoolmistress blushed, as Mercy did in the same 
conversation, as you remember.] 

That sounds like a cock-and-bull-story, — said the 
young fellow whom they call John. I abstained 



108 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

from making Hamlet's remark to Horatio, and con- 
tinued. 

Not long since, the church-wardens were repairing 
and beautifying an old Saxon church in a certain Eng- 
lish village, and among other things thought the 
doors should be attended to. One of them particu- 
larly, the front-door, looked very badly, crusted, as it 
were, and as if it would be all the better for scraping. 
There happened to be a microscopist in the village 
who had heard the old pirate story, and he took it into 
his head to examine the crust on this door. There 
was no mistake about it ; it was a genuine historical 
document, of the Ziska drum-head pattern, — a real 
cutis Jiumana^ stripped from some old Scandinavian 
filibuster, and the legend was true. 

My friend, the Professor, settled an important his- 
torical and financial question once by the aid of an 
exceedingly minute fragment of a similar document. 
Behind the pane of plate-glass which bore his name 
and title burned a modest lamp, signifying to the 
passers-by that at all hours of the night the slightest 
favors (or fevers) were welcome. A youth who had 
freely partaken of the cup which cheers and likewise 
inebriates, following a moth-like impulse very natural 
under the circumstances, dashed his fist at the light 
and quenched the meek luminary, — breaking through 
the plate-glass, of course, to reach it. Now I don't 
want to go into minutice at table, you know, but a 
naked hand can no more go through a pane of thick 
glass without leaving some of its cuticle, to say the 
least, behind it, than a butterfly can go through a sau- 
sage-machine without looking the worse for it. The 
Professor gathered up the fragments of glass, and with 
them certain very minute but entirely satisfactory doo- 



THE AUTOCKAT OF THE BEEAKFAST-TABLE. 109 

uments which would have identified and hanged any- 
rogue in Christendom who had parted witli them. — 
The historical question, Who did it f and the financial 
question, Who j^ciid for it ? were both settled before 
the new lamp was lighted the next evening. 

You see, my friends, what immense conclusions, 
touching our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor, 
may be reached by means of very insignificant prem- 
ises. This is eminently true of manners and forms of 
speech ; a movement or a phrase often tells you all 
you want to know about a person. Thus, " How 's 
your health? " (commonly pronounced hadltK) instead 
of, How do you do ? or. How are you ? Or calling 
your little dark entry a " hall," and your old rickety 
one-horse wagon a " kerridge." Or telling a person 
who has been trying to please you that he has given 
you pretty good " sahtisfahction." Or saying that you 
" remember of " such a tiling, or that you have been 
" stoppin' " at Deacon Somebody's, — and other such 
expressions. One of my friends had a little marble 
statuette of Cupid in the parlor of his country-house, 
— bow, arrows, wings, and all complete. A visitor, 
indigenous to the region, looking pensively at the fig- 
ure, asked the lady of the house " if that was a statoo 
of her deceased infant ? " What a delicious, though 
somewhat voluminous biography, social, educational, 
and aesthetic, in that brief question ! 

[Please observe with what Machiavellian astuteness 
I smuggled in the particular offence which it was my 
object to hold up to my fellow-boarders, without too 
personal an attack on the mdividual at whose door it 
lay.] 

That was an exceedingly dull person who made the 
remark, Ex pede Herculem. He might as well have 



110 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

ssaid, " from a peck of apples you may judge of the 
barrel." Ex pede, to be sure ! Read, instead, Ex 
ungue minimi digiti pedis^ Herculem^ ejusque pa- 
trem^ matrem^ avos et 2^^oavos, Jilios, nepotes et pro- 
nepotes 1 Talk to me about your 5os ttqv aro) / Tell 
me about Cuvier's getting up a megatherium from a 
tooth, or Agassiz's drawing a portrait of an undiscov- 
ered fish from a single scale ! As the " O " revealed 
Giotto, — as the one word "moi " betrayed the Strat- 
ford-atte-Bowe-taught Anglais, — so all a man's ante- 
cedents and possibilities are summed up in a single ut- 
terance which gives at once the gauge of his education 
and his mental organization. 

Possibilities, Sir ? — said the divinity-student ; can't 
a man who says Haow f arrive at distinction ? 

Sir, — I replied, — in a republic all things are pos- 
sible. But the man with a future has almost of ne* 
cessity sense enough to see that any odious trick of 
speech or manners must be got rid of. Does n't Syd- 
ney Smith say that a public man in England never 
gets over a false quantity uttered in early life ? Our 
public men are in little danger of this fatal mis-step, 
as few of them are in the habit of introducing Latin 
into their speeches, — for good and sufficient reasons. 
But they are bound to speak decent English, — un- 
less, indeed, they are rough old campaigners, like Gen- 
eral Jackson or General Taylor; in which case, a few 
scars on Priscian's head are pardoned to old fellows 
who have quite as many on their own, and a constitu- 
ency of thirty empires is not at all particular, provided 
they do not swear in their Presidential Messages. 

However, it is not for me to talk. I have made 
mistakes enough in conversation and print. I never 
find them out until they are stereotyped, and then 1 



«rHE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. Ill 

think they rarely escape me. I have no doubt I shall 
make half a dozen slips before this breakfast is over, 
and remember them all before another. How one 
does tremble with rage at his own intense momentary 
stupidity about things he knows perfectly well, and to 
think how he lays himself open to the impertinences 
of the captatores verhorum^ those useful but humble 
scavengers of the language, whose business it is to 
pick up what might offend or injure, and remove it, 
hugging and feeding on it as they go ! I don't want 
to speak too slightingly of these verbal critics ; — how 
can I, who am so fond of talking about errors and 
vulgarisms of speech ? Only there is a difference be- 
tween those clerical blunders which almost every man 
commits, knowing better, and that habitual grossness 
or meanness of speech which is unendurable to edu- 
cated persons, from anybody that wears silk or broad- 
cloth. 

[I write down the above remarks this morning, 
January 26th, making this record of the date that no- 
body may think it was written in wrath, on account of 
any particular grievance suffered from the invasion of 
any individual scarahoeus grammaticus.'] 

— I wonder if anybody ever finds fault with any- 
tliing I say at this table when it is repeated ? I hope 
they do, I am sure. I should be very certain that I 
had said nothing of much significance, if they did 
not. 

Did you never, in walking in the fields, come across 
a large flat stone, which had lain, nobody knows how 
long, just where you found it, with the grass forming 
a little hedge, as it were, all round it, close to its edges, 
— and have you not, in obedience to a kind of feeling 
that told you it had been lying there long enough, in- 



112 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

sinuated your stick or your foot or your fingers under 
its edge and turned it over as a housewife turns a cake, 
when she says to herself, " It 's done brown enough 
by this time " ? What an odd revelation, and what 
an unforeseen and unpleasant surprise to a small com- 
munity, the very existence of which you had not sus- 
pected, until the sudden dismay and scattering among 
its members produced by your turning the old stone 
over ! Blades of grass flattened down, colorless, 
matted together, as if they had been bleached and 
ironed ; hideous crawling creatures, some of them co- 
leopterous or horny-shelled, — turtle-bugs one wants 
to call them •, some of them softer, but cunningly 
spread out and compressed like Lepine watches; 
(Nature never loses a crack or a crevice, mind you, 
or a joint in a tavern bedstead, but she always has 
one of her flat-pattern live timekeepers to slide mto 
it ;) black, glossy crickets, with their long filaments 
sticking out like the whips of four-horse stage-coaches ; 
motionless, slug-like creatures, young larvae, perhaps 
more horrible in their pulpy stillness than even in the 
infernal wriggle of maturity ! But no sooner is the 
stone turned and the wholesome light of day let upon 
this compressed and blinded community of creeping 
things, than all of them which enjoy the luxury of legs 
— and some of them have a good many — rush round 
wildly, butting each other and everything in their way, 
and end in a general stampede for luiderground re- 
treats from the region poisoned by sunshine. Next 
year you will find the grass growing tall and green 
where the stone lay ; the ground-bird builds her nest 
where the beetle had his hole ; the dandelion and the 
buttercup are growing there, and the broad fans of in« 
sect-angels open and shut over their golden disks, as 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 113 

the rhythmic waves of blissful consciousness pulsate 
through their glorified being. 

— The young fellow whom they call John saw fit 
to say, in his very familiar way, — at which I do not 
choose to take offence, but which I sometimes think it 
necessary to repress, that I was coming it rather strong 
on the butterflies. 

No, I replied ; there is meaning in each of those 
images, — the butterfly as well as the others. The 
stone is ancient error. The grass is human nature 
borne down and bleached of all its color by it. The 
shapes which are found beneath are the crafty beings 
that thrive in darkness, and the weaker organisms 
kept helpless by it. He who turns the stone over is 
whosoever puts the staff of truth to the old lying in- 
cubus, no matter whether he do it with a serious face 
or a laughing one. The next year stands for the com- 
ing time. Then shall the nature which had lain 
blanched and broken rise in its full stature and native 
hues in the sunshine. Then shall God's minstrels 
build their nests in the hearts of a newborn humanity. 
Then shall beauty — Divinity taking outlines and 
color — light upon the souls of men as the butterfly, 
image of the beatified spirit rising from the dust, 
soars from the shell that held a poor grub, which 
would never have found wings had not the stone been 
lifted. 

You never need think you can turn over any old 
falsehood without a terrible squirming and scattering 
of the horrid little population that dwells under it. 

— Every real thought on every real subject knocks 
the wind out of somebody or other. As soon as his 
breath comes back, he very probably begins to expend 
it in hard words. These are the best evidence a man 



114 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

can have that he has said something it was time to 
say. Dr. Johnson was disappointed in the effect of 
one of his pamphlets. " I think I have not been at- 
tacked enough for it," he said ; — " attack is the re- 
action ; I never think I have hit hard unless it re- 
bounds." 

— If a fellow attacked my opinions in print would 
I reply ? Not I. Do you think I don't understand 
what my friend, the Professor^ long ago called the 
hydrostatic paradox of controversy f 

Don't know what that means ? — Well, I will teU 
you. You know, that, if you had a bent tube, one 
arm of which was of the size of a pipe-stem, and the 
other big enough to hold the ocean, water would 
stand at the same height in one as in the other. Con- 
troversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way, 
— and the fools know it. 

— No, but I often read what they say about other 
people. There are about a dozen phrases which all 
come tumbling along together, like the tongs, and the 
shovel, and the poker, and the brush, and the bellows, 
in one of those domestic avalanches that everybody 
knows. If you get one, you get the whole lot. 

What are they ? — Oh, that depends a good deal on 
latitude and longitude. Epithets follow the isother- 
mal lines pretty accurately. Grouping them in two 
families, one finds himself a clever, genial, witty, wise, 
brilliant, sparkling, thoughtful, distinguished, cele- 
brated, illustrious scholar and perfect gentleman, and 
first writer of the age ; or a duU, foolish, wicked, pert, 
shallow, ignorant, insolent, traitoxous, black-hearted 
outcast, and disgrace to civilization. 

What do I think determines the set of phrases a 
man gets ? — Well, I should say a set of influences 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 115 

something like these : — 1st. Relationships, political, 
religious, social, domestic. 2d. Oysters, in the form 
of suppers given to gentlemen connected with criti- 
cism. I believe in the school, the college, and the 
clergy ; but my sovereign logic, for regulating public 
opinion — which means commonly the opinion of half 
a dozen of the critical gentry — is the following. Major 
proposition. Oysters au naturel. Mino7' proposition. 
The same " scalloped." Conclusion. That — (here 
insert entertainer's name) is clever, witty, wise, bril- 
liant, — and the rest. 

— No, it is n't exactly bribery. One man has oys- 
ters, and another epithets. It is an exchange of hos- 
pitalities ; one gives a " spread " on linen, and the other 
on paper, — that is all. Don't you think you and I 
should be apt to do just so, if we were in the critical 
line ? I am sure I coidd n't resist the softening influ- 
ences of hospitality. I don't like to dine out, you 
know, — I dine so well at our own table [our land- 
lady looked radiant], and the company is so pleasant 
[a rustling movement of satisfaction among the board- 
ers] ; but if I did partake of a man's salt, with such 
additions as that article of food requires to make it 
palatable, I could never abuse him, and if I had to 
speak of him, I suppose I should hang my set of jing- 
ling epithets round him like a string of sleigh-bells. 
Good feeling helps society to make liars of most of us, 
— not absolute liars, but such careless handlers of 
truth that its sharp corners get terribly rounded. I 
love truth as chiefest among the virtues ; I trust it 
runs in my blood ; but I would never be a critic, be- 
cause I know I could not always tell it. I might write 
a criticism of a book that happened to please me ; that 
is another matter. 



116 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

— Listen, Benjamin Franklin ! This is for you, and 
such others of tender age as you may tell it to. 

When we are as yet small children, long before the 
time when those two grown ladies offer us the choice 
of Hercules, there comes up to us a youthful angel, 
holding in his right hand cubes like dice, and in his 
left spheres like marbles. The cubes are of stainless 
ivory, and on each is written in letters of gold — 
Truth. The spheres are veined and streaked and 
spotted beneath, with a dark crimson flush above, 
where the light falls on them, and in a certain aspect 
you can make out upon every one of them the three 
letters L, I, E. The child to whom they are offered 
very probably clutches at both. The spheres are the 
most convenient things in the world; they roll with 
the least possible impulse just where the child would 
have them. The cubes will not roll at all ; they have 
a great talent for standing still, and always keep right 
side up. But very soon the young philosopher finds 
that things which roll so easily are very apt to roll 
into the wrong corner, and to get out of his way 
when he most wants them, while he always knows 
where to find the others, which stay where they are 
left. Thus he learns — thus we learn — to drop the 
streaked and speckled globes of falsehood and to hold 
fast the white angular blocks of truth. But then 
comes Timidity, and after her Good-nature, and last 
of all Polite-behavior, all insisting that truth must 
roll^ or nobody can do anything with it ; and so the 
first with her coarse rasp, and the second with her 
broad file, and the third with her silken sleeve, do so 
round off and smooth and polish the snow-white cubes 
of truth, that, when they have got a little dingy by use, 
it becomes hard to tell them from the rolling spheres 
of falsehood. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 117 

The schoolmistress was polite enough to say that 
she was pleased with this, and that she would read it 
to her little flock the next day. But she should tell 
the children, she said, that there were better reasons 
for truth than could be found in mere experience of 
its convenience and the inconvenience of lying. 

Yes, — I said, — but education always begins 
through the senses, and works up to the idea of ab- 
solute right and wrong. The first thing the child has 
to learn about this matter is, that lying is unprofita- 
ble, — afterwards that it is against the peace and dig- 
nity of the universe. 

— Do I think that the particular form of lying 
often seen in newspapers, under the title, " From our 
Foreign Correspondent," does any harm ? — Why, no, 
— I don't know that it does. I suppose it does n't 
really deceive people any more than the "Arabian 
Nights " or " Gidliver's Travels " do. Sometimes the 
writers compile too carelessly, though, and mix up 
facts out of geographies, and stories out of the penny 
papers, so as to mislead those who are desirous of in- 
formation. I cut a piece out of one of the papers the 
other day, which contains a number of improbabilities, 
and, I suspect, misstatements. I will send up and get 
it for you, if you would like to hear it. — Ah, this is 
it ; it is headed 

"Our Sumatra Correspondence. 

" This island is now the property of the Stamford 
family, — having been won, it is said, in a raffle, by 

Sir • Stamford, during the stock-gambling mania 

of the South-Sea Scheme. The history of this gentle- 
man may be found in an interesting series of questions 
(unfortunately not yet answered) contained in the 



118 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

'Notes and Queries.' This island is entirely sur- 
rounded by the ocean, which here contains a large 
amount of saline substance, crystallizing in cubes re- 
markable for their symmetry, and frequently displays 
on its surface, during calm weather, the rainbow tints 
of the celebrated South-Sea bubbles. The summers 
are oppressively hot, and the winters very probably 
cold ; but this fact cannot be ascertained precisely, as, 
for some peculiar reason, the mercury m these lati= 
tudes never shrinks, as in more northern regions, and 
thus the thermometer is rendered useless in winter. 

" The principal vegetable productions of the island 
are the pepper tree and the bread-fruit tree. Pepper 
being very abundantly produced, a benevolent society 
was organized in London during the last century for 
supplying the natives with vinegar and oysters, as an 
addition to that delightful condiment. [Note received 
from Dr. D. P.] It is said, however, that, as the oys- 
ters were of the kind called natives in England, the 
natives of Sumatra, in obedience to a natural instinct, 
refused to touch them, and confined themselves en- 
tirely to the crew of the vessel in which they were 
brouofht over. This information was received from one 
of the oldest inhabitants, a native himself, and exceed- 
ingly fond of missionaries. He is said also to be very 
skilful in the cuisine peculiar to the island. 

" During the season of gathering the pepper, the 
persons employed are subject to various incommodi- 
ties, the chief of which is violent and long-continued 
sternutation, or sneezing. Such is the vehemence of 
these attacks, that the unfortunate subjects of them 
are often driven backwards for great distances at im- 
mense speed, on the well-kjiown principle of the 
aeolipile. Not being able to see where they are going, 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 119 

these poor creatures dash themselves to pieces against 
the rocks or are precipitated over the cliffs and thus 
many valuable lives are lost annually. As, during the 
whole pepper-harvest, they feed exclusively on this 
stimulant, they become exceedingly irritable. The 
smallest injury is resented with ungovernable rage. A 
young man suffering from the jyejpjper-fever^ as it is 
called, cudgelled another most severely for appropriat- 
ing a superannuated relative of trifling value, and was 
only pacified by having a present made him of a pig 
of that peculiar species of swine called the Peccavi by 
the Catholic Jews, who, it is well known, abstain from 
swine's flesh in imitation of the Mahometan Bud- 
dhists. 

" The bread-tree grows abundantly. Its branches 
are well known to Europe and America under the 
familiar nane of maccaroni. The smaller twigs are 
called vermicelli. They have a decided animal flavor, 
as may be observed in the soups containing them. 
Maccaroni, being tubular, is the favorite habitat of a 
very dangerous insect, which is rendered peculiarly fero- 
cious by being boiled. The government of the island, 
therefore, never allows a stick of it to be exported 
without being accompanied by a piston with which its 
cavity may at any time be thoroughly swept out. 
These are commonly lost or stolen before the macca- 
roni arrives among us. It therefore always contains 
many of these insects, which, however, generally die of 
old age in the shops, so that accidents from this source 
are comparatively rare. 

" The fruit of the bread-tree consists principally of 
hot rolls. The butter ed-muflin variety is supposed to 
be a hybrid with the cocoa-nut palm, the cream found 
on the milk of the cocoa-nut exuding from the hybrid 



120 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

in the shape of butter, just as the ripe fruit is spKt* 
ting, so as to fit it for the tea-table, where it is com- 
monly served up with cold " — 

— There, — I don't want to read any more of it. 
You see that many of these statements are highly im- 
probable. — No, I shall not mention the paper. — No, 
neither of them wrote it, though it reminds me of the 
style of these popular writers. I think the fellow who 
wrote it must have been reading some of their stories, 
and got them mixed up with his history and geog- 
raphy. I don't suppose Tie lies — he sells it to the 
editor, who knows how many squares off " Sumatra " 
is. The editor, who sells it to the public — By the 
way, the papers have been very civil — haven't they ? 
— to the — the — what d'ye call it ? — " Northern 
Magazine," — is n't it ? — got up by some of those 
Come-outers, down East, as an organ for their local 
peculiarities. 

— The Professor has been to see me. Came in, 
glorious, at about twelve o'clock, last night. Said he 
had been with " the boys." On inquiry, found that 
"the boys" were certain baldish and grayish old 
gentlemen that one sees or hears of in various im- 
portant stations of society. The Professor is one of 
the same set, but he always talks as if he had been 

out of college about ten years, whereas 

[Each of these dots was a little nod, which the com- 
pany understood, as the reader will, no doubt.] He 
calls them sometimes "the boys," and sometimes "the 
old fellows.''' Call him by the latter title, and see 
how he likes it. — Well, he came in last night glori- 
ous, as I was saying. Of course I don't mean vin- 
ously exalted ; he drinks little wine on such occasions, 
and is well known to all the Peters and Patricks as 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 121 

the gentleman who always has indefinite quantities of 
black tea to kill any extra glass of red claret he may 
have swallowed. But the Professor says he always 
gets tipsy on old memories at these gatherings. He 
was, I forget how many years old when he went to 
the meeting ; just turned of twenty now, — he said. 
He made various youthful proposals to me, including 
a duet under the landlady's daughter's window. He 
had just learned a tricky he said, of one of " the boys," 
of getting a splendid bass out of a door-panel by rub- 
bing it with the palm of his hand. Offered to sing 
"The sky is bright,'" accompanjring himself on the 
front-door, if I would go down and help in the chorus. 
Said there never was such a set of fellows as the old 
boys of the set he has been with. Judges, mayors, 
Congress-men, Mr. Speakers, leaders in science, clergy- 
men better than famous, and famous too, poets by the 
half-dozen, singers with voices like angels, financiers, 
wits, three of the best laughers in the Commonwealth, 
engineers, agriculturists, — all forms of talent and 
knowledge he pretended were represented in that meet- 
ing. Then he began to quote Byron about Santa 
Croce, and maintained that he could " furnish out 
creation " in all its details from that set of his. He 
would like to have the whole boodle of them (I re- 
monstrated against this word, but the Professor said it 
was a diabolish good word, and he would have no 
other), with their wives and children shipwrecked on 
a remote island, just to see how splendidly they would 
reorganize society. They could build a city, — they 
have done it ; make constitutions and laws ; establish 
churches and lyceums ; teach and practise the heal- 
ing art ; instruct in every department ; found observ- 
atories; create commerce and manufactures; write 



122 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

songs and hymns, and sing 'em, and make instru- 
ments to accom]3any the songs with ; lastly, publish a 
journal almost as good as the " Northern Magazine," 
edited by the Come-outers. There was nothing they 
were not up to, from a christening to a hanging ; the 
last, to be sure, could never be called for, unless some 
stranger got in among them. 

— I let the Professor talk as long as he liked ; it 
did n't make much difference to me whether it was 
all truth, or partly made up of pale Sherry and simi- 
lar elements. All at once he jumped up and said, — 

Don't you want to hear what I just read to the 
bo3^s ? 

I have had questions of a similar character asked 
me before, occasionally. A man of iron mould might 
perhaps say. No ! I am not a man of iron mould, and 
said that I should be delighted. 

The Professor then read — with that slightly sing- 
song cadence which is observed to be common in poets 
reading their own verses — the following stanzas ; 
holding them at a focal distance of about two feet and 
a half, with an occasional movement back or forward 
for better adjustment, the appearance of which has 
been likened by some impertinent young folks to that 
of the act of playing on the trombone. His eyesight 
was never better ; I have his word for it. 

MARE RUBRUM. 

Flash out a stream of blood-red wine! — 

For I would drink to other days; 
And brip;hter shall their memory shine, 

Seen flaming through its crimson blaze. 
The roses die, the summers fade; 

But every ghost of bovhood's dream 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 123 

By Nature's magic power is laid 

To sleep beneath this blood-red stream. 

It filled the purple grapes that lay 

And drank the splendors of the sun 
Where the long summer's cloudless day 

Is mirrored in the broad Garonne; 
It pictures still the bacchant shapes 

That saw their hoarded sunlight shed, 

The maidens dancing on the grapes, 

Their milk-white ankles splashed with recL 

Beneath these waves of crimson lie. 

In rosy fetters prisoned fast. 
Those flitting shapes that never die, 

The swift-winged visions of the past. 
Kiss but the crystal's mystic rim, 

Each shadow rends its flowery chain. 
Springs in a bubble from its brim 

And walks the chambers of the brain. 

Poor Beauty! time and fortune's wrono* 

No form nor feature may withstand, — 
Thy wrecks are scattered all along. 

Like emptied sea-shells on the sand ; — 
Yet, sprinkled with this blushing rain, 

The dust restores each blooming girl, 
As if the sea-shells moved again 

Their glistening lips of pink and pearl. 

Here lies the home of school-boy life. 

With creaking stair and wind-swept hall. 
And, scarred by many a truant knife, 

Our old initials on the wall ; 
Here rest — their keen vibrations mute 

The shout of voices known so well, 
The ringing laugh, the wailing flute, 

The chiding of the sharp-tongued bell. 

Here, clad in burning robes, are laid 
Life's blossomed joys, untimely shed; 



124 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE 

And here those cherished forms have strayed 
We miss awhile, and call them dead. 

What wizard fills the maddening glass? 
What soil the enchanted clusters grew, 

That buried passions wake and pass 
In beaded drops of fiery dew ? 

Nay, take the cup of blood-red wine, — 

Our hearts can boast a warmer glow, 
Filled from a vintage more divine, — 

Calmed, but not chilled by winter's snowl 
To-night the palest wave we sip 

Rich as the priceless draught shall be 
That wet the bride of Cana's lip, — 

The wedding wine of Galilee! 



VI. 

Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which 
fits them all. 

— I thmk. Sir, — said the divinity-student, — you 
must intend that for one of the sayings of the Seven 
Wise Men of Boston you were speaking of the other 
day. 

I thank you, my yoimg friend, — was my reply, — 
but I must say something better than that, before I 
could pretend to fill out the number. 

— The schoolmistress wanted to know how many of 
these sayings there were on record, and what, and by 
whom said. 

— Why, let us see, — there is that one of Benjamin 
Franklin, " the great Bostonian," after whom this lad 
was named. To be sure, he said a great many wise 
things, — and I don't feel sure he did n't borrow this, 
— he speaks as if it were old. But then he applied it 
Bo neatly ! — 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 125 

" He that has once done you a kindness will be 
more ready to do you another than he whom you your- 
self have obliged." 

Then there is that glorious Epicurean paradox, ut« 
tered by my friend, the Historian, in one of his flash- 
ing moments : — 

" Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense 
with its necessaries." 

To these must certainly be added that other saying 
of one of the wittiest of men : — 

" Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris." 

— The divinity-student looked grave at this, but 
said nothing. 

The schoolmistress spoke out, and said she did n't 
think the wit meant any irreverence. It was only an- 
other way of saying, Paris is a heavenly place after 
New York or Boston. 

A jaunty-looking person, who had come in with the 
young fellow they call John, — evidently a stranger, — 
said there was one more wise man's saying that he had 
heard ; it was about our place, but he did n't know 
who said it. — A civil curiosity was manifested by the 
company to hear the fourth wise saying. I heard him 
distinctly whispering to the young fellow who brought 
him to dinner. Shall I tell it f To which the answer 
was. Go ahead I — Well, — he said, — this was what 
I heard : — 

" Boston State-House is the hub of the solar system. 
You couldn't pry that out of a Boston man if you 
had the tire of all creation straightened out for a 
crowbar." 

Sir, — said I, — I am gratified with your remark. 
It expresses with pleasing vivacity that which I have 
Bometimes heard uttered with malignant dulness. The 



126 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

satire of the remark is essentially true of Boston, — • 
and of all other considerable, — and inconsiderable, — 
places with which I have had the privilege of being 
acquainted. Cockneys think London is the only place 
in the world. Frenchmen — you remember the line 
about Paris, the Court, the World, etc. — I recollect 
well, by the way, a sign in that city which ran thus : 
*' HStel de FUnivers et des Etats Unis ; " and as Paris 
is the universe to a Frenchman, of course the United 
States are outside of it. — " See Naples and then die." 
It is quite as bad with smaller places. I have been 
about, lecturing, you know, and have found the follow- 
ing propositions to hold true of all of them. 

1. The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through 
the centre of each and every town or city. 

2. If more than fifty years have passed since its 
foundation, it is affectionately styled by the inhabit- 
ants the '''good old town of " — (whatever its name 
may happen to be.) 

3. Every collection of its inhabitants that comes to- 
gether to listen to a stranger is invariably declared to 
be a " remarkably intelligent audience." 

4. The climate of the place is particularly favorable 
to longevity. 

5. It contains several persons of vast talent little 
known to the world. (One or two of them, you may 
perhaps chance to remember, sent short pieces to the 
" Pactolian " some time since, which were " respect^ 
fully declined.") 

Boston is just like other places of its size ; — only, 
perhaps, considering its excellent fish-market, paid 
fire-department, superior* monthly publications, and 
correct habit of spelling the English language, it has 
Bome right to look down on the mob of cities. I 'U 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 127 

tell you, though, if you want to know it, what is the 
real offence of Boston. It drains a large water-shed 
of its intellect, and will not itself be drained. If it 
would only send away its first-rate men, instead of its 
second-rate ones (no offence to the well-known excep- 
tions, of which we are always proud), we should be 
spared such epigrammatic remarks as that which the 
gentleman has quoted. There can never be a real me- 
tropolis in this country, until the biggest centre can 
drain the lesser ones of their talent and wealth. — 1 
have observed, by the way, that the people who really 
live in two great cities are by no means so jealous of 
each other as are those of smaller cities situated within 
the intellectual basin, or suction-range^ of one large 
one, of the pretensions of any other. Don't you see 
why ? Because their promising young author and ris- 
ing lawyer and large capitalist have been drained off to 
the neighboring big city, — their prettiest girl has 
been exported to the same market ; all their ambition 
points there, and all their thin gilding of glory comes 
from there. I hate little toad-eating cities. 

— Would I be so good as to specify any particular 
example ? — Oh, — an example ? Did you ever see a 
bear-trap ? Never ? Well, should n't you like to see 
me put my foot into one ? With sentiments of the 
highest consideration I must beg leave to be excused. 

Besides, some of the smaller cities are charming. If 
they have an old church or two, a few stately man- 
sions of former grandees, here and there an old dwell- 
ing with the second story projecting (for the conven- 
ience of shooting the Indians knocking at the front- 
door with their tomahawks), — if they have, scattered 
about, those mighty square houses built something 
more than half a century ago, and standing like archi- 



128 THE AUTOCEAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

tectural boulders dropped by the former diluvium of 
wealth, whose refluent wave has left them as its monu- 
ment, — if they have gardens with elbowed apple-trees 
that push their branches over the high board-fence 
and drop their fruit on the side-walk, — if they have 
a little grass in the side-streets, enough to betoken 
quiet without proclaiming decay, — I think I could go 
to pieces, after my life's work were done, in one of 
those tranquil plo-ces, as sweetly as in any cradle that 
an old man may be rocked to sleep in. I visit such 
spots always with infinite delight. My friend, the Poet, 
says, that rapidly growing towns are most unfavor- 
able to the imaginative and reflective faculties. Let a 
man live in one of these old quiet places, he says, and 
the wine of his soul, which is kept thick and turbid by 
the rattle of busy streets, settles, and, as you hold it up, 
you may see the sun through it by day and the stars 
by night. 

— Do I think that the little villages have the con- 
ceit of the great towns ? — I don't believe there is 
much difference. You know how they read Pope's 
line in the smallest town in our State of Massachu- 
setts ? — Well, they read it 

" All are but parts of one stupendous Hull !" 

Every person's feelings have a front-door and a 
side-door by which they may be entered. The front- 
door is on the street. Some keep it always open ; 
some keep it latched ; some, locked ; some bolted, — 
with a chain that will let you peep in, but not get in ; 
and some nail it up, so that nothing can pass its 
threshold. This front-door leads into a passage which 
opens into an ante-room, and this into the interior 
apartments. The side-door opens at once into the 
sacred chambers. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 129 

There is almost always at least one key to this side- 
door. This is carried for years hidden in a mother's 
bosom. Fathers, brothers, sisters, and friends, often, 
but by no means so universally, have duplicates of it. 
The wedding-ring conveys a right to one ; alas, if none 
is given with it ! 

If nature or accident has put one of these keys 
into the hands of a person who has the torturing in- 
stinct, I can only solemnly pronounce the words that 
Justice utters over its doomed victim, — The Lord 
have mercy on your soul I You will probably go mad 
within a reasonable time, — - or, if you are a man, run 
off and die with your head on a curb-stone, in Mel- 
bourne or San Francisco, — or, if you are a woman, 
quarrel and break your heart, or, turn into a pale, 
jointed petrifaction that moves about as if it were 
alive, or play some real life-tragedy or other. 

Be very careful to whom you trust one of these keys 
of the side-door. The fact of possessing one renders 
those even who are dear to you very terrible at times. 
You can keep the world out from your front-door, or 
receive visitors only when you are ready for them ; 
but those of your own flesh and blood, or of certain 
grades of intimacy, can come in at the side-door, if 
they will, at any hour and in any mood. Some of 
them have a scale of your whole nervous system, and 
can play all the gamut of your sensibilities in semi- 
tones, — touching the naked nerve-pulps as a pianist 
strikes the keys of his instrument. I am satisfied 
that there are as great masters of this nerve-playing 
as Vieuxtemps or Thalberg in their lines of perform- 
ance. Married life is the school in which the most 
accomplished artists in this department are found. A 
delicate woman is the best instrument ; she has such 



130 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

a magnificent compass of sensibilities ! From tiie deep 
inward moan which follows pressure on the great 
nerves of right, to the sharp cry as the filaments of 
taste are struck with a crashing sweep, is a range 
wliich no other instrument possesses. A few exercises 
on it daily at home fit a man wonderfully for his 
habitual labors, and refresh him immensely as he re- 
turns from them. No stranger can get a great many 
notes of torture out of a human soul ; it takes one that 
knows it well, — parent, child, brother, sister, inti- 
mate. Be very careful to whom you give a side-door 
key ; too many have them already. 

— You remember the old story of the tender-hearted 
man, who placed a frozen viper in his bosom, and was 
stung by it when it became thawed ? If we take a 
cold-blooded creature into our bosom, better that it 
should sting us and we should die than that its chill 
should slowly steal into our hearts ; warm it we never 
can ! I have seen faces of women that were fair to 
look upon, yet one could see that the icicles were form- 
ing round these women's hearts. I knew what freez- 
ing image lay on the white breasts beneath the laces ! 

A very simple mtellectiial mechanism answers the 
necessities of friendship, and even of the most inti- 
mate relations of life. If a watch tells us the hour 
and the minute, we can be content to carry it about 
with us for a life-time, though it has no second-hand 
and is not a repeater, nor a musical watch, — though 
it is not enamelled nor jewelled, — in short, though 
it has little beyond the wheels required for a trust- 
worthy instrument, added to a good face and a pair of 
useful hands. The more wheels there are in a watch 
or a brain, the more trouble they are to take care of. 
The movements of exaltation which belong to genius 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 131 

are egotistic by their very nature. A calm, clear 
mind, not subject to the spasms and crises which are 
BO often met with in creative or intensely perceptive 
natures, is the best basis for love or friendship. — Ob- 
serve, I am talking about minds. I won't say, the 
more intellect, the less capacity for loving ; for that 
would do wrong to the understanding and reason ; — 
but, on the other hand, that the brain often runs 
away with the heart's best blood, which gives the 
world a few pages of wisdom or sentiment or poetry, 
instead of making one other heart happy, I have no 
question. 

If one's intimate in love or friendship cannot or does 
not share all one's intellectual tastes or pursuits, that 
is a small matter. Intellectual companions can be 
found easily in men and books. After all, if we 
think of it, most of the world's loves and friendships 
have been between people that could not read nor 
spell. 

But to radiate the heat of the affections into a clod, 
which absorbs all that is poured into it, but never 
warms beneath the sunshine of smiles or the pressure 
of hand or lip, — this is the great martyrdom of sen- 
sitive beings, — most of all in that perpetual auto dafe 
where young womanhood is the sacrifice. 

— You noticed, perhaps, what I just said about the 
loves and friendships of illiterate persons, — that is, of 
the human race, with a few exceptions here and there. 
I Kke books, — I was born and bred among them, and 
have the easy feeling, when I get into their presence, 
that a stable-boy has among horses. I don't think I 
undervalue them either as companions or instructors. 
But I can't help remembering that the world's great 
men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its 



132 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

great scholars great men. The Hebrew patriarchs 
had small libraries, I think, if any ; yet they represent 
to our imaginations a very complete idea of manhood, 
and, I think, if we could ask in Abraham to dine with 
us men of letters next Saturday, we should feel hon- 
ored by his company. 

What I wanted to say about books is this : that 
there are times in which every active mind feels itself 
above any and all human books. 

— I think a man must have a good opinion of him- 
self, Sir, — said the divinity-student, — who should 
feel himself above Shakespeare at any time. 

My young friend, — I replied, — the man who is 
never conscious of a state of feeling or of intellectual 
effort entirely beyond expression by any form of 
words whatsoever is a mere creature of language. I 
can hardly believe there are any such men. Why 
think for a moment of the power of music. The 
nerves that make us alive to it spread out (so the 
Professor tells me) in the most sensitive region of the 
marrow, just where it is widening to run upwards 
into the hemispheres. It has its seat in the region of 
sense rather than of thought. Yet it produces a con- 
tinuous and, as it were, logical sequence of emotional 
and intellectual changes ; but how different from 
trains of thought proper ! how entirely beyond the 
reach of symbols! — Think of human passions as com- 
pared with all phrases ! Did you ever hear of a man's 
growing lean by the reading of " Romeo and Juliet," 
or blowing his brains out because Desdemona was ma- 
ligned ? There are a good many symbols, even, that 
are more expressive than words. I remember a young 
wife who had to part with her husband for a time. 
She did not write a mournful poem ; indeed, she was 



THE AUTOCKAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 133 

a silent person, and perhaps hardly said a word about 
it ; but she quietly turned of a deep orange color with 
jaundice. A great many people in this world have 
but one form of rhetoric for their profoundest experi- 
ences, — namely, to waste away and die. When a 
man can read^ his paroxysm of feeling is passing. 
When he can read^ his thought has slackened its 
hold. — You talk about reading Shakespeare, using 
him as an expression for the highest intellect, and you 
wonder that any common person should be so pre- 
sumptuous as to suppose his thought can rise above 
the text which lies before him. But think a moment. 
A child's reading of Shakespeare is one thing, and 
Coleridge's or Schlegel's reading of him is another. 
The saturation-point of each mind differs from that of 
every other. But I think it is as true for the small 
mind which can only take up a little as for the great 
one which . takes up much, that the suggestive trains 
of thought and feeling ought always to rise above — 
not the author, but the reader's mental version of the 
author, whoever he may be. 

I think most readers of Shakespeare sometimes find 
themselves thrown into exalted mental conditions like 
those produced by music. Then they may drop the 
book, to pass at once into the region of thought with- 
out words. We may happen to be very dull folks, 
you and I, and probably are, unless there is some par- 
ticular reason to suppose the contrary. But we get 
glimpses now and then of a sphere of spiritual possi- 
bilities, where we, dull as we are now, may sail in vast 
circles round the largest compass of earthly intelli- 
gences. 

— I confess there are times when I feel like the 
friend I mentioned to you some time ago, — I hate 



134 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

the very sight of a book. Sometimes it becomes al- 
most a physical necessity to talk out what is in the 
mind, before putting anything else into it. It is very 
bad to have thoughts and feelings, which were meant 
to come out in talk, strike in, as they say of some 
complaints that ought to show outwardly. 

I always believed in life rather than in books. I 
suppose every day of earth, with its hundred thou- 
sand deaths and something more of births, — with its 
loves and hates, its triumphs and defeats, its pangs 
and blisses, has more of humanity in it than all the 
books that were ever written, put together. I believe 
the flowers growing at this moment send up more fra- 
grance to heaven than was ever exhaled from all the 
essences ever distilled. 

— Don't I read up various matters to talk about at 
this table or elsewhere? — No, that is the last thing I 
would do. I will tell you my rule. Talk about those 
subjects you have had long in your mind, and listen 
to what others say about subjects you have studied 
but recently. Knowledge and timber should n't be 
much used till they are seasoned. 

— Physiologists and metaphysicians have had their 
attention turned a good deal of late to the automatic 
and involuntary actions of the mind. Put an idea 
into your intelligence and leave it there an hour, a 
day, a year, without ever having occasion to refer to 
it. When, at last, you return to it, you do not find it 
as it was when acquired. It has domiciliated itself, 
so to speak, — become at home, — entered into rela- 
tions with your other thoughts, and integrated itself 
with the whole fabric of the mind. — Or take a simple 
and familiar example ; Dr. Carpenter has adduced it 
You forget a name, in conversation, — go on talking, 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 135 

without making any effort to recall it, — and presently 
the mind evolves it by its own invokmtary and uncon- 
scious action, while you were pursuing another train 
of thought, and the name rises of itseK to your lips. 

There are some curious observations I should like 
to make about the mental machinery, but I think we 
are getting rather didactic. 

— I should be gratified, if Benjamin Franklin 
would let me know something of his progress in the 
French language. I rather liked that exercise he read 
us the other day, though I must confess I should 
hardly dare to translate it, for fear some people in a 
remote city where I once lived might think I was 
drawing their portraits. 

— Yes, Paris is a famous place for societies. I 
don't know whether the piece I mentioned from the 
French author was intended simply as Natural His- 
tory, or whether there was not a little malice in his 
description. At any rate, when I gave my translation 
to B. F. to turn back again into French, one reason 
was that I thought it would sound a little bald in 
English, and some people might think it was meant 
to have some local bearing or other, — which the 
author, of course, did n't mean, inasmuch as he could 
not be acquainted with anything on this side of the 
water. 

[The above remarks were addressed to the school- 
mistress, to whom I handed the paper after looking it 
over. The divinity-student came and read over her 
shoulder, — very curious, apparently, but his eyes wan- 
dered, I thought. Fancying that her breathing was 
somewhat hurried and high, or thoracic^ as my friend, 
the Professor, calls it, I watched her a little more 
closely. — It is none of my business. — After all, it is 



136 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

the imponderables that move the world, — heat, elec- 
tricity, love. — Hahet f ] 

This is the piece that Benjamin Franklin made into 
boarding-school French, such as you see here ; don't 
expect too much ; — the mistakes give a relish to it, I 
think. 

LES SOCI^TfiS POLYPHYSIOPHILOSOPHIQUES. 

Ces Societes Ik sont une Institution pour suppleer aux besoins 
d'esprit et de ccEur de ces individus qui ont survecu k leurs emo- 
tions a regard du beau sexe, et qui n'ont pas la. distraction de 
I'habitude de boire. 

Pour devenir membre d'une de ces Societes, on doit avoir le 
moins de cheveux possible. S'il y en reste plusieursqui resistent 
aux depilatoires naturelles et autres, on doit avoir quelques con- 
naissances, n'importe dans quel genre. Des le moment qu'on 
Guvre la porte de la Societe, on a un grand interet dans toutes 
les choses dont on ne sait rien. Ainsi, un microscopiste demontre 
un nouveau flexor du tarse d'un melolontha vulgaris. Douze sa- 
vans improvises, portans des besides, et qui ne connaissent rien 
des insectes, si ce n'est les morsures du culex^ se precipitent sur 
I'instrument, et voient, — une grande bulle d'air, dont lis s'emer- 
veillent avec effusion. Ce qui est un spectacle plein d'instruc- 
tion, — pour ceux qui ne sont pas de ladite Societe. Tous les 
membres regardent les cliimistes en particulier avec un air d'in- 
telligence parfaite pendant qu'iis prouvent dans un discours 
d'une demiheure que O^ K^ H^ C^ etc. font quelque chose qui 
n'est bonne a rien, mais qui probablement a une odeur tres 
desagreable, selon I'habitude des produits chimiques. Apres celk 
vient un mathematicien qui vous bourre avec des a-\-b et vous 
rapporte enfin un x-\-y^ dont vous n'avez pas besoin et qui ne 
change nullement vos relations avec la vie. Un naturaliste vous 
parle des formations specialesdes animaux excessivementincon- 
nus, dont vous n'avez jamais soup9onne I'existence. Ainsi il 
vous decrit les follicules de Vappendix vermiformis d'un dzig- 
gueta-l. Vous ne savez pas ce que e'est qu'un follicule. Vous 
ne savez pas ce que c'est qu'un appendix vermiformis. Vous 
n'avez jamais entendu parler du dzigguetai. Ainsi vous gagnez 
toutes ces connaissances a la fois, qui s'attachent k votre esprit 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 137 

comme I'eau adhere aux plumes d'un canard. On connait toutes 
les lanoues ex officio en devenant membre d'une de ces Societes. 
Ainsi quand on entend lire un Essai sur les dialectes Tchut- 
chieus, on comprend tout cela de suite, et s'instruit enorme- 
nient. 

II y a deux especes d'individus qu'on trouve toujours k ces 
Societes: 1^ Le membre a questions; 2^^ Le membre a " By- 
laws." 

La question est une specialite. Celui qui en fait metier ne fait 
jamais des reponses. La question est une maniere tres commode 
de dii'e les choses suivantes: "Me voila! Je ne suis pas fossil, 
moi, — je respire encore! J'ai des idees, — voyez mon intel- 
ligence ! Vous ne croyiez pas, vous autres, que je savais quelque 
chose de cela! Ah, nous avons un peu de sagacite, voyez vous! 
Nous ne sommes nullement la bete qu'on pense! " — Le faiseur 
de questions donne peu d^ attention aux reponses qu^on fait; ce 
finest pas la dans sa specialite. 

Le membre a " Bylaws " est le bouchon de toutes les emotions 
mousseuses et genereuses qui se montrent dans la Societe. C'est 
un empereur manque, — un tyran a la troisieme trituration. 
C'est un esprit dur, borne, exact, grand dans les petitesses, petit 
dans les grandeurs, selon le mot du grand Jefferson. On nc 
I'aime pas dans la Societe, mais on le respecte et on le craint. 
II n'y a qu'un mot pour ce membre audessus de " Bylaws." Ce 
mot est pour lui ce que I'Om est aux Hindous. C'est sa religion; 
11 n'y a rien audelk. Ce mot Ik c'est la Constitution! 

Lesdites Societes publient des feuilletons de tems en terns. 
On les trouve abandonnes a sa porte, nus comme des enfans 
nouveaunes, faute de membrane cutanee, ou meme papyracee. 
Si on aime la botanique, on y trouve une memoire sur les 
coquilles ; si on fait des etudes zoologiques, on trouve un grand 
tas deq'^ — 1, ce qui doit etre infiniment plus commode que 
les encyclopedies. Ainsi il est clair comme la metaphysique 
qu'on doit devenir membre d'une Societe telle que nous dd- 
crivons. 

Recette pour le Depilatoire PhysiopMlosophique. 

Chaux vive lb. ss. Eau bouillante Oj. 

Depilez avec. Polissez ensuite. 

— I told the bov that his translation into French 



138 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

was creditable to him ; and some of the company wish- 
ing to hear what there was in the piece that made me 
smile, I turned it into English for them, as well as I 
could, on the spot. 

The landlady's daughter seemed to be much amused 
by the idea that a depilatory could take the place of 
literary and scientific accomplishments ; she wanted 
me to print the piece, so that she might send a copy of 
it to her cousin in Mizzourah ; she did n't thmk he 'd 
have to do anything to the outside of his head to get 
into any of the societies ; he had to wear a wig once, 
when he played a part in a tabullo. 

No, — said I, — I should n't think of printing that 
in English. I '11 tell you why. As soon as you get a 
few thousand people together in a town, there is some- 
body that every sharp thing you say is sure to hit. 
What if a thing was written in Paris or in Pekin ? — 
that makes no difference. Everybody in those cities, 
or almost everybody, has his counterpart here, and in 
all large places. — You never studied averages, as I 
have had occasion to. 

I '11 tell you how I came to know so much about av- 
erages. There was one season when I was lecturing, 
commonly, five evenings in the week, through most 
of the lecturing period. I soon found, as most speak- 
ers do, that it was pleasanter to work one lecture than 
to keep several in hand. 

— Don't you get sick to death of one lecture ? — 
said the landlady's daughter, — who had a new dress 
on that day, and was in spirits for conversation. 

I was going to talk about averages, — I said, — but 
I have no objection to telling you about lectures, to 
begin with. 

A new lecture always has a certain excitement con- 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 139 

nected with its delivery. One thinks well of it, as of 
most things fresh from his mind. After a few deliv- 
eries of it, one gets tired and then disgusted with its 
repetition. Go on delivering it, and the disgust 
passes off, until, after one has repeated it a hundred 
or a hundred and fifty times, he rather enjoys the 
hundred and first or hundred and fifty-first time, be- 
fore a new audience. But this is on one condition, ^ 
that he never lays the lecture down and lets it cool. 
If he does, there comes on a loathing for it which is 
intense, so that the sight of the old battered manu- 
script is as bad as sea-sickness. 

A new lecture is just like any other new tool. We 
use it for a while with pleasure. Then it blisters our 
hands, and we hate to touch it. By and by our hands 
get callous, and then we have no longer any sensitive- 
ness about it. But if we give it up, the calluses dis- 
appear ; and if we meddle with it again, we miss the 
novelty and get the blisters. — The story is often 
quoted of Whitefield, that he said a sermon was good 
for nothing until it had been preached forty times. 
A lecture does n't begin to be old until it has passed 
its hundredth delivery ; and some, I think, have doub- 
led, if not quadrupled, that number. These old lec- 
tures are a man's best, commonly ; they improve by age, 
also, — like the pipes, fiddles, and poems I told you 
of the other day. One learns to make the most of 
their strong points and to carry off their weak ones, — 
to take out the really good things which don't tell on 
the audience, and put in cheaper things that do. All 
this degrades him, of course, but it improves the lec- 
ture for general delivery. A thoroughly popular lec- 
ture ought to have nothing in it which five hundred 
people cannot all take in a flash, just as it is uttered. 



140 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

— No, indeed, — I should be very sorry to say any- 
thing disrespectful of audiences. I have been kindly 
treated by a great many, and may occasionally face 
one hereafter. But I tell you the average intellect 
of five hundred persons, taken as they come, is not 
very high. It may be sound and safe, so far as it 
goes, but it is not very rapid or profound. A lecture 
ought to be something which all can understand, about 
something which interests everybody. I think, that, 
if any experienced lecturer gives you a different ac- 
count from this, it will probably be one of those elo- 
quent or forcible speakers who hold an audience by 
the charm of their manner, whatever they talk about, 
— even when they don't talk very well. 

But an average^ which was what I meant to speak 
about, is one of the most extraordinary subjects of ob- 
servation and study. It is awful in its uniformity, in 
its automatic necessity of action. Two communities 
of ants or bees are exactly alike in all their actions, so 
far as we can see. Two lyceum assemblies, of five 
hundred each, are so nearly alike, that they are abso- 
lutely undistinguishable in many cases by any definite 
mark, and there is nothing but the place and time by 
which one can tell the " remarkably intelligent audi- 
ence " of a town in New York or Ohio from one in 
any New England town of similar size. Of course, if 
any principle of selection has come in, as in those 
special associations of young men which are common 
in cities, it deranges the uniformity of the assemblage. 
But let there be no such interfering circumstances, 
and one knows pretty well even the look the audience 
will have, before he goes in. Front seats : a few old 
folks, — shiny-headed, — slant up best ear towards 
the speaker, — drop off asleep after a while, when the 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 141 

air begins to get a little narcotic with carbonic acid. 
Bright women's faces, young and middle-aged, a little 
behind these, but toward the front, — (pick out the 
best, and lecture mainly to that.) Here and there a 
countenance, sharp and scholarlike, and a dozen pretty 
female ones sprinkled about. An indefinite number 
of pairs of young people, — happy, but not always 
very attentive. Boys, in the background, more or less 
quiet. Dull faces, here, there, — in how many places! 
I don't say dull people^ but faces without a ray of 
sympathy or a movement of expression. They are 
what kill the lecturer. These negative faces with 
their vacuous eyes and stony lineaments pump and 
suck the warm soul out of him ; — that is the chief 
reason why lecturers grow so pale before the season is 
over. They render latent any amount of vital caloric; 
they act on our minds as those cold-blooded creatures 
I was talking about act on our hearts. 

Out of all these inevitable elements the audience is 
generated, — a great compound vertebrate, as much 
like Mtj others you have seen as any two mammals of 
the same species are like each other. Each audience 
laughs, and each cries, in just the same places of your 
lecture ; that is, if you make one laugh or cry, you 
make all. Even those little indescribable movements 
which a lecturer takes cognizance of, just as a driver 
notices his horse's cocking his ears, are sure to come 
in exactly the same place of your lecture always. I 
declare to you, that as the monk said about the pic« 
ture in the convent, — that he sometimes thought the 
living tenants were the shadows, and the painted fig- 
ures the realities, — I have sometimes felt as if I were 
a wandering spirit, and this great unchanging multi- 
vertebrate which I faced night after night was one 



142 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BUEAKFAST-TABLE. 

ever-listening animal, which writhed along after me 
wherever I fled, and coiled at my feet every evening, 
turning up to me the same sleepless eyes which 1 
thought I had closed with my last drowsy incantation ! 

— Oh yes ! A thousand kindly and courteous acts, 
— a thousand faces that melted individually out of my 
recollection as the April snow melts, but only to steal 
away and find the beds of flowers whose roots are 
memory, but which blossom in poetry and dreams. I 
am not ungrateful, nor unconscious of all the good 
feeling and intelligence everywhere to be met with 
through the vast parish to which the lecturer minis- 
ters. But when I cet forth, leading a string of my 
mind's daughters to market, as the country-folk fetch 
in their strings of horses — Pardon me, that was a 
coarse fellow who sneered at the sympathy wasted on 
an unhappy lecturer, as if, because he was decently 
paid for his services, he had therefore sold his sen- 
sibilities. — Family men get dreadfully homesick. In 
the remote and bleak village the heart returns to the 
red blaze of the logs in one's fireplace at home. 

" There are his young barbarians all at play," — 

if he owns any youthful savages. — No, the world has 
a million roosts for a man, but only one nest. 

— It is a fine thing to be an oracle to which an ap- 
peal is always made in all discussions. The men of 
facts wait their turn in grim silence, with that slight 
tension about the nostrils which the consciousness of 
carrying a " settler " in the form of a fact or a re- 
volver gives the individual thus armed. When a per- 
son is really full of information, and does not abuse ^i 
to crush conversation, his part is to that of the real 
tnlkers what the instrumental accompaniment is in a 
trio or quartette of vocalists. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 143 

— What do I mean by the real talkers ? — Why, 
the people with fresh ideas, of course, and plenty of 
good warm words to dress them in. Facts always 
yield the place of honor in conversation, to thoughts 
about facts ; but if a false note is uttered, down comes 
the finger on the key and the man of facts asserts his 
true dignity. I have known three of these men of 
facts, at least, who were always formidable, — and one 
of them was tyrannical. 

— Yes, a man sometimes makes a grand appear- 
ance on a particidar occasion ; but these men knew 
something about almost everything, and never made 
mistakes. — He? Verieers in first-rate style. The 
mahogany scales off now and then in spots, and then 

you see the cheap light stuff. — I found very fine 

in conversational information, the other day when we 
were in company. The talk ran upon mountains. He 
was wonderfully well acquainted with the leading 
facts about the Andes, the Apennines, and the Ap- 
palachians ; he had nothing in particular to say about 
Ararat, Ben Nevis, and various other mountains that 
were mentioned. By and by some Revolutionary anec- 
dote came up, and he showed singular familiarity with 
the lives of the Adamses, and gave many details re- 
lating to Major Andre. A point of Natural History 
being suggested, he gave an excellent account of the 
air-bladder of fishes. He was very full upon the sub- 
ject of agriculture, but retired from the conversation 
when horticulture was introduced in the discussion. So 
he seemed well acquainted with the geology of anthra- 
cite, but did not pretend to know anything of other 
kinds of coal. There was something so odd about the 
extent and limitations of his knowledge, that I sus- 
pected all at once what might be the meaning of it, 



144 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

and waited till I got an opportunity. — Have you 
seen the " New American Cyclopaedia ? " said I. — I 
have, he replied ; I received an early copy. — How 
far does it go ? — He turned red, and answered, — - 
To Araguay. — Oh, said I to myself, — not quite so 
far as Ararat ; — that is the reason he knew nothing 
about it ; but he must have read all the rest straight 
through, and, if he can remember what is in this 
volume until he has read all those which are to come, 
he will know more than I ever thought he would. 

Since I had this experience, I hear that somebody 
else has related a similar story. I did n't borrow it 
for all that. — I made a comparison at table some 
time since, which has often been quoted and received 
many compliments. It was that of the mind of a 
bigot to the pupil of the eye ; the more light you pour 
on it, the more it contracts. The simile is a very ob- 
vious, and, I suppose I may now say, a happy one ; for 
it has just been shown me that it occurs in a Preface 
to certain Political Poems of Thomas Moore's, pub- 
lished long before my remark was repeated. When a 
person of fair character for literary honesty uses an 
image such as another has employed before him, the 
presumption is, that he has struck upon it independent- 
ly, or unconsciously recalled it, supposing it his own. 

It is impossible to tell, in a great many cases, 
whether a comparison which suddenly suggests itself 
is a new conception or a recollection. I told you the 
other day that I never wrote a line of verse that seemed 
to me comparatively good, but it appeared old at once, 
and often as if " had been borrowed. But I confess I 
never suspected the above comparison of being old, ex- 
cept from the fact of its obviousness. It is proper, 
however, that I proceed by a formal instrument to re. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 145 

linquish all claim to any property in an idea given to 
the world at about the time when I had just joined the 
class in which Master Thomas Moore was then a some- 
what advanced scholar. 

I, therefore, in full possession of my native honesty, 
but knowing the liability of all men to be elected to 
public office, and for that reason feeling uncertain how 
soon I may be in danger of losing it, do hereby re- 
nounce all claim to being considered the^Vs^ person 
who gave utterance to a certain simile or comparison 
referred to in the accompanying documents, and relat- 
ing to the pupil of the eye on the one part and the 
mind of the bigot on the other, I hereby relinquish 
all glory and profit, and especially all claims to letters 
from autograph collectors, founded upon my supposed 
property in the above comparison, — knowing well, 
that, according to the laws of literature, they who 
speak first hold the fee of the thing said. I do also 
agree that all Editors of Cyclopaedias and Biographical 
Dictionaries, all Publishers of Reviews and Papers, 
and all Critics writing therein, shall be at liberty to 
retract or qualify any opinion predicated on the sup- 
position that I was the sole and undisputed author of 
the above comparison. But, inasmuch as I do affirm 
that the comparison aforesaid was uttered by me in 
the firm belief that it was new and wholly my own, 
and as I have good reason to think that I had never 
seen or heard it when first expressed by me, and as it 
is well known that different persons may indepen- 
dently utter the same idea, — as is evinced by that 
familiar line from Donatus, 

" Pereant illi qui ante nos nostra dixerunt," — 
now, therefore, I do request by this instrimient that 



146 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

all well-disposed persons will abstain from asserting or 
implying that I am open to any accusation whatsoever 
touching the said comparison, and, if they have so as- 
serted or implied, that they will have the manliness 
forthwith to retract the same assertion or insinuation. 

I think few persons have a greater disgust for 
plagiarism than myself. If I had even suspected that 
the idea in question was borrowed, I should have dis- 
claimed originality, or mentioned the coincidence, as I 
once did in a case where I had happened to hit on an 
idea of Swift's. — But what shall I do about these 
verses I was going to read you? I am afraid that 
half mankind would accuse me of stealing their 
thoughts, if I printed them. I am convinced that 
several of you, especially if you are getting a little on 
in life, will recognize some of these sentiments as hav- 
ing passed through your consciousness at some time. I 
can't help it, — it is too late now. The verses are writ- 
ten, and you must have them. Listen, then, and you 
shall hear 

WHAT WE ALL THINK. 

That age was older once than now 

In spite of locks untimely shed, 
Or silvered on the youthful brow; 

That babes make love and children wed. 

That sunshine had a heavenly glow, 

Which faded with those " good old days," 

When winters came with deeper snow, 
And autumns with a softer haze. 

That — mother, sister, wife, or child — 
The " best of women " each has known. 

Were school-boys ever half so wild ? 
How young the grandpapas have grown ! 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 147 

That hut for this our souls were free, 
And but for that our lives were blest; 

That in some season yet to be 

Our cares will leave us time to rest. 

Whene'er we groan with ache or pain, 
Some common ailment of the race, — 

Though doctors think the matter plain, — 
That ours is "a peculiar case." 

That when like babes with fingers burned 

We count one bitter maxim more, 
Our lesson all the world has learned. 

And men are wiser than before. 

That when we sob o'er fancied woes, 

The angels hovering overhead 
Count every pitying drop that flows 

And love us for the tears we shed. 

That when we stand with tearless eye 
And turn the beggar from our door, 

They still approve us when we sigh 
"Ah, had I but one thousand more ! " 

That weakness smoothed the path of sin, 
In half the slips our youth has known ; 

And whatsoe'er its blame has been, 
That Mercy flowers on faults outgrown. 

Though temples crowd the crumbled brink 

O'erhanging truth's eternal flow, 
Their tablets bold with tvhat loe think, 

Their echoes dumb to what lue knowj 

That one unquestioned text we read, 

All doubt beyond, all fear above, 
Nor crackling pile nor cursing creed 

Can burn or blot it : God is Love I 



148 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 



VII. 

[This particular record is noteworthy principally 
for containing a paper by my friend, the Professor, 
with a poem or two annexed or intercalated. I would 
suggest to yomig persons that they should pass over- 
it for the present, and read,, instead of it, that story 
about the young man who was in love with the young 
lady, and in great trouble for something like nine 
pages, but happily married on the tenth page or there- 
abouts, which, I take it for granted, will be contained 
in the periodical where this is found, imless it differ 
from all other publications of the kind. Perhaps, if 
such young people will lay the number aside, and take 
it up ten years, or a little more, from the present time, 
they may find something in it for their advantage. 
They can't possibly understand it all now.] 

My friend, the Professor, began talking with me 
one day in a dreary sort of way. I could n't get at 
the difficulty for a good while, but at last it turned 
out that somebody had been calling him an old man. 
— He didn't mind his students calling him the old 
man, he said. That was a technical expression, and 
he thought that he remembered hearing it applied to 
himself when he was about twenty-five. It may be 
considered as a familiar and sometimes endearing ap- 
pellation. An Irishwoman calls her husband " the old 
man," and he returns the caressing expression by 
speakmg of her as " the old woman." But now, said 
he, just suppose a case like one of these. A young 
stranger is overheard talking of you as a very nice old 
gentleman. A friendly and genial critic speaks of 
your green old age as illustrating the truth of some 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 149 

axiom you had uttered with reference to that period 
of life. What /call an old man is a person with a 
smooth, shining crown and a fringe of scattered white 
hairs, seen in the streets on sunshiny days, stooping 
as he walks, bearing a cane, moving cautiously and 
slowly ; telling old stories, smiling at present follies, 
living in a narrow world of dry habits ; one that re- 
mains waking when others have dropped asleep, and 
keeps a little night-lamp-flame of life burning year 
after year, if the lamp is not upset, and there is only a 
careful hand held round it to prevent the puffs of wind 
from blowing the flame out. That 's what I call an 
old man. 

Now, said the Professor, you don't mean to tell me 
that I have got to that yet ? Why, bless you, I am 
several years short of the time when — [I knew what 
was coming, and could hardly keep from laughing; 
twenty years ago he used to quote it as one of those 
absurd speeches men of genius will make, and now he 
is going to argue from it] — several years short of the 
time when Balzac says that men are — most — you 
know — dangerous to — the hearts of — in short, most 
to be dreaded by duennas that have charge of suscep- 
tible females. — What age is that? said I, statistically. 

— Fifty-two years, answered the Professor. — Balzac 
ought to know, said I, if it is true that Goethe said of 
him that each of his stories must have been dug out of 
a woman's heart. But fifty-two is a high figure. 

Stand in the light of the window. Professor, said I. 

— The Professor took up the desired position. — You 
have white hairs, I said. — Had 'em any time these 
twenty years, said the Professor. — And the crow's-foot, 
— jpes anserinus^ rather. — The Professor smiled, as 
I wanted him to, and the folds radiated like the ridges 



150 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

of a half-opened fan, from the outer comer of the eyes 
to the temples. — And the calipers, said I. — What 
are the calijiers f he asked, curiously. — Why, the 
parenthesis, said I. — Parenthesis f said the Profes- 
sor ; what 's that ? — Why look in the glass when you 
are disposed to laugh, and see if your mouth is n't 
framed in a couple of crescent lines, — so, my boy ( ). 
— It 's all nonsense, said the Professor ; just look at 
my biceps ; — and he began pulling off his coat to 
show me his arm. Be careful, said I ; you can't bear 
exposure to the air, at your time of life, as you could 
once. — I will box with you, said the Professor, row 
with you, walk with you, ride with you, swim with 
you, or sit at table with you, for fifty dollars a side. — 
Pluck survives stamina, I answered. 

The Professor went off a little out of humor. A few 
weeks afterwards he came in, looking very good-na- 
tured, and brought me a paper, which I have here, and 
from which I shall read you some portions, if you 
don't object. He had been thinking the matter over, 
he said, — had read Cicero "De Senectute," and made 
up his mind to meet old age half way. These were 
some of his reflections which he had written down; so 
here you have 

THE PROFESSOR'S PAPER. 

There is no doubt when old age begins. The hu- 
man body is a furnace which keeps in blast three-score 
years and ten, more or less. It burns about three 
hundred pounds of carbon a year (besides other fuel), 
when in fair working order, according to a great chem- 
ist's estimate. When the fire slackens, life declines ; 
when it goes out, we are dead. 

It has been shown by some noted French experi- 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 151 

menters, that the amount of combustion increases up 
to about the thirtieth year, remains stationary to about 
forty-five, and then diminishes. This last is the point 
where old age starts from. The great fact of physical 
life is the perpetual commerce with the elements, and 
the fire is the measure of it. 

About this time of life, if food is plenty where you 
live, — for that, you know, regulates matrimony, — 
you may be expecting to find yourself a grandfather 
some fine morning ; a kind of domestic felicity which 
gives one a cool shiver of delight to think of, as among 
the not remotely possible events. 

I don't mind much those slipshod lines Dr. Johnson 
vn-ote to Mrs. Thrale, telling her about life's declining 
from thirty -five ; the furnace is in full blast for ten 
years longer, as I have said. The Romans came very 
near the mark ; their age of enlistment reached from 
seventeen to forty-six years. 

What is the use of fighting against the seasons, or 
the tides, or the movements of the planetary bodies, or 
this ebb in the wave of life that flows through us ? 
We are old fellows from the moment the fire begins 
to go out. Let us always behave like gentlemen when 
we are introduced to new acquaintances. 

Incijnt AUegoria Senectutis. 

Old Age, this is Mr. Professor ; Mr. Professor, this 
is Old Age. 

Old Age. — Mr. Professor, I hope to see you well. 
I have known you for some time, though I think you 
did not know me. Shall we walk down the street to- 
gether ? 

Professor (drawing back a little). — We can talk 
more quietly, perhaps, in my study. Will you tell 



152 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

me how it is you seem to be acquainted with every- 
body you are introduced to, though he evidently con- 
siders you an entire stranger ? 

Old Age. — I make it a rule never to force myself 
upon a person's recognition until I have known him 
at least ^'i;e years. 

Professor. — Do you mean to say that you have 
known me so long as that ? 

Old Age. — I do. I left my card on you longer 
ago than that, but I am afraid you never read it; yet 
I see you have it with you. 

Professor. — Where ? 

Old Age. — There, between your eyebrows, — three 
straight lines running up and down ; all the probate 
courts know that token, — '' Old Age, his mark." 
Put your forefinger on the inner end of one eyebrow, 
and your middle finger on the inner end of the other 
eyebrow ; now separate the fingers, and you will 
smooth out my sign-manual ; that 's the way you used 
to look before I left my card on you. 

Professor. — What message do people generally 
send back when you first call on them ? 

Old Age. — Not at home. Then I leave a card 
and go. Next year I call ; get the same answer ; leave 
another card. So for five or six, — sometimes ten 
years or more. At last, if they don't let me in, I 
break in through the front door or the windows. 

We talked together in this way some time. Then 
Old Age said again, — Come, let us walk down the 
street together, — and offered me a cane, an eyeglass, 
a tij)pet, and a pair of over-shoes. — No, much 
obliged to you, said I. I don't want those things, and 
I had a little rather talk with you here, privately, in 
my study. ^ So I dressed myseK up in a jaunty way 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 153 

and walked out alone ; — got a fall, caught a cold, 
was laid up with a lumbago, and had time to think 
over this whole matter. 

Explicit Allegoria Senectutis. 

We have settled when old age begins. Like all 
Nature's processes, it is gentle and gradual in its ap- 
proaches, strewed with illusions, and all its little griefs 
are soothed by natural sedatives. But the iron hand is 
not less irresistible because it wears the velvet glove. 
The button-wood throws off its bark in large flakes, 
which one may find lying at its foot, pushed out, and 
at last pushed off, by that tranquil movement from 
beneath, which is too slow to be seen, but too power- 
ful to be arrested. One finds them always, but one 
rarely sees them fall. So it is our youth drops from 
us, — scales off, sapless and lifeless, and lays bare the 
tender and immature fresh growth of old age. Looked 
at collectively, the changes of old age appears as a 
series of personal insults and indignities, terminating 
at last in death, which Sir Thomas Browne has called 
" the very disgrace and ignominy of our natures." 

My lady's cheek can boast no more 
The cranberry white and pink it wore; 
And where her shining locks divide, 
The parting line is all too wide — 

No, no, — this will never do. Talk about men, if you 
will, but spare the poor women. 

We have a brief description of seven stages of life 
by a remarkably good observer. It is very presump- 
tuous to attempt to add to it, yet I have been struck 
with the fact that life admits of a natural analysis 
into no less than fifteen distinct periods. Taking the 
five primary divisions, infancy, childhood, youth, man- 



154 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

hood, old age, each of these has its own three periods 
of immaturity, complete development, and decline. I 
recognise an old baby at once, — with its " pipe and 
mug" (a stick of candy and a porringer), — so does 
everybody ; and an old child shedding its milk-teeth 
is only a little prototype of the old man shedding his 
permanent ones. Fifty or thereabouts is only the 
childhood, as it were, of old age; the graybeard 
youngster must be weaned from his late suppers now. 
So you will see that you have to make fifteen stages 
at any rate, and that it would not be hard to make 
twenty-five-; five primary, each with five secondary di- 
visions. 

The infancy and childhood of commencing old age 
have the same ingenuous simplicity and delightful un- 
consciousness about them that are shown by the first 
stage of the earlier periods of life. The great delusion 
of mankind is in supposing that to be individual and 
exceptional which is universal and according to law. 
A person is always startled when he hears himself 
seriously called an old man for the first time. 

Nature gets us out of youth into manhood, as sailors 
are hurried on board of vessels, — in a state of intoxi- 
cation. We are hustled into maturity reeling with 
our passions and imaginations, and we have drifted 
far away from jjort before we awake out of our illu- 
sions. But to carry us out of maturity into old age, 
without our knowing where we are going, she drugs 
us with strong opiates, and so we stagger along with 
wide open eyes that see nothing until snow enough 
has fallen on our heads to rouse our half comatose 
brains out of their stupid trances. 

There is one mark of age which strikes me more than 
any of the physical ones ; — I mean the formation of 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 155 

Habits. An old man who shrinks into himself falls 
into ways which become as positive and as much be- 
yond the reach of outside influences as if they were 
governed by clock work. The animal functions, as 
the physiologists call them, in distinction from the 
organic^ tend, in the process of deterioration to which 
age and neglect united gradually lead them, to assume 
the periodical or rhythmical tjrpe of movement. Every 
man's heart (this organ belongs, you know, to the 
organic system) has a regular mode of action ; but 
I know a great many men whose brains^ and all their 
voluntary existence flowing from their brains, have a 
systole and diastole as regular as that of the heart 
itself. Habit is the approximation of the animal sys- 
tem to the organic. It is a confession of failure in 
the highest function of being, which involves a per- 
petual self-determination, in full view of all existing 
circumstances. But habit, you see, is an action in 
present circumstances from past motives. It is sub- 
stituting 2i vis a tergo for the evolution of living 
force. 

When a man, instead of burning up three hundred 
pounds of carbon a year, has got down to two hundred 
and fifty, it is plain enough he must economize force 
somewhere. Now habit is a labor-saving invention 
which enables a man to get along with less fuel, — 
that is all ; for fuel is force, you know, just as much 
in the page I am writing for you as in the locomotive 
or the legs which carry it to you. Carbon is the same 
thing, whether you call it wood, or coal, or bread and 
cheese. A reverend gentleman demurred to this state- 
ment, — as if, because combustion is asserted to be the 
sine qua non of thought, therefore thought is alleged 
to be a purely chemical process. Facts of chemistry 



156 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

are one thing, I told him, and facts of consciousness 
another. It can be proved to him, by a very simple 
analysis of some of his spare elements, that every Sun- 
day, when he does his duty faithfully, he uses up more 
phosphorus out of his brain and nerves than on or- 
dinary days. But then he had his choice whether to 
do his duty, or to neglect it, and save his phosphorus 
and other combustibles. 

It follows from all this that the formation of habits 
ought naturally to be, as it is, the special characteristic 
of age. As for the muscular powers, they pass their 
maximum long before the time when the true decline 
of life begins, if we may judge by the experience of 
the ring. A man is " stale," I think, in their lan- 
guage, soon after thirty, — often, no doubt, much ear- 
lier, as gentlemen of the pugilistic profession are ex- 
ceedingly apt to keep their vital fire burning with the 
hlower uj). 

— So far without TuUy. But in the mean time 1 
have been reading the treatise, " De Senectute." It is 
not long, but is a leisurely performance. The old gen- 
tleman was sixty-three years of age when he addressed 
it to his friend, T. Pomponius Atticus, Eq., a person of 
distinction, some two or three years older. We read 
it when we are school-boys, forget aU about it for thirty 
years, and then take it up again by a natural instinct, — 
provided always that we read Latin as we drink water, 
without stopping to taste it, as all of us who ever 
learned it at school or college ought to do. 

Cato is the chief speaker in the dialogue. A good 
deal of it is what would be called in vidgar phrase 
" slow." It unpacks and unfolds incidental illustra- 
tions which a modern writer would look at the back 
of, and toss each to its pigeon-hole. I think ancient 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 157 

classics and ancient people are alike in the tendency to 
this kind of expansion. 

An old doctor came to me once (this is literal fact) 
with some contrivance or other for people with broken 
kneepans. As the patient would be confined for a 
good while, he might find it didl work to sit with his 
hands in his lap. Reading, the ingenious inventor 
suggested, would be an agreeable mode of passing 
the time. He mentioned, in his written account of 
his contrivance, various works which might amuse the 
weary hour. I remember only three, — Don Quixote, 
Tom Jones, and Watts on the Mind. 

It is not generally understood that Cicero's essay 
was delivered as a lyceum lecture (concio popularis) 
at the Temple of Mercury. The journals (jpapyri) of 
the day ("Tempora Quotidiana," — " Tribunus Quir- 
inalis," — " Praeco Romanus," and the rest) gave ab- 
stracts of it, one of which I have translated and mod- 
ernized, as being a substitute for the analysis I in- 
tended to make. 

IV. Kal Mart. . . . 

The lecture at the Temple of Mercury, last evening, 
was well attended by the ^lite of our great city. Two 
hundred thousand sestertia were thought to have been 
represented in the house. The doors were besieged by 
a mob of shabby fellows (illotum vulgus)^ who were 
at length quieted after two or three had been some- 
what roughly handled (gladio juguloti}. The speaker 
was the well-known Mark Tully, Eq., — the subject 
Old Age. Mr. T. has a lean and scraggy person, with 
a very unpleasant excrescence upon his nasal feature, 
from which his nickname of chick-pea (Cicero) is said 
by some to be derived. As a lecturer is public prop- 



158 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

erty, we may remark, that his outer garment (toga) 
was of cheap stuff and somewhat worn, and that his 
general style and appearance o£ dress and manner 
(habitus^ vestitusque) were somewhat provincial. 

The lecture consisted of an imaginary dialogue be- 
tween Cato and Lselius. We found the first portion 
rather heavy, and retired a few moments for refresh- 
ment (j)ocula qumdam mni). — All want to reach old 
age, says Cato, and grumble when they get it ; there- 
fore they are donkeys. — The lecturer will allow us to 
say that he is the donkey ; we know we shall grumble 
at old age, but we want to live through youth and 
manhood, in spite of the troubles we shall groan over. 
— There was considerable prosing as to what old age 
can do and can't. — True, but not new. Certainly, 
old folks can't jump, — break the necks of their thigh- 
bones (feinomin cervices)^ if they do ; can't crack nuts 
with their teeth ; can't climb a greased pole (malum 
inunctiim scandere non possunt) ; but they can tell 
old stories and give you good advice ; if they know 
what you have made up your mind to do when you ask 
them. — All this is well enough, but won't set the 
Tiber on fire (Tiherim accendere nequaquain potest.) 

There were some clever things enough (dicta Jiaud 
inepta)^ a few of which are worth reporting. — Old 
people are accused of being forgetful ; but they never 
forget where they have put their money. — Nobody is 
so old he does n't think he can live a year. — The 
lecturer quoted an ancient maxim, — Grow old early, 
if you would be old long, — but disputed it. — Author- 
ity, he thought, was the chief privilege of age. — It is 
not great to have money, but fine to govern those who 
have it. — Old age begins at forty-six years, accord- 
ing to the common opinion. — It is not every kind of 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 159 

old age or of wine that grows sour with time. — Some 
excellent remarks were made on immortality, but 
mainly borrowed from and credited to Plato. — Sev- 
eral pleasing anecdotes were told. — Old Milo, cham- 
pion of the heavy weights in his day, looked at his 
arms and whimpered, " They are dead." Not so dead 
as you, you old fool, — says Cato ; — you never were 
good for anything but for your shoulders and flanks. 
■ — Pisistratus asked Solon what made him dare to be 
so obstinate. Old age, said Solon. 

The lecture was on the whole acceptable, and a 
credit to our culture and civilization. — The reporter 
goes on to state that there will be no lecture next 
week, on account of the expected combat between the 
bear and the barbarian. Betting (^S23onsio) two to 
one (^duo ad unmii) on the bear. 

— After all, the most encouraging things I find in 
the treatise, "De Senectute," are the stories of men 
who have found new occupations when growing old, or 
kept up their common pursuits in the extreme period 
of life. Cato learned Greek when he was old, and 
speaks of wishing to learn the fiddle, or some such 
instrument (^fidibus)^ after the example of Socrates. 
Solon learned something new, every day, in his old 
age, as he gloried to proclaim. Cyrus pointed out 
with pride and pleasure the trees he had planted with 
his own hand. [I remember a pillar on the Duke of 
Northiunberland's estate at Alnwick, with an inscrip- 
tion in similar words, if not the same. That, like 
other country pleasures, never wears out. None is too 
rich, none too poor, none too young, none too old to 
enjoy it.] There is a New England story I have heard, 
more to the point, however, than any of Cicero's. A 



160 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

young farmer was urged to set out some apple-trees. — 
No, said he, they are too long growing, and I don't 
want to plant for other people. The young farmer's 
father was spoken to about it, but he, with better rea= 
son, alleged that apj^le-trees were slow and life was 
fleeting. At last some one mentioned it to the old 
grandfather of the yoimg farmer. He had nothing 
else to do, — so he stuck in some trees. He lived 
lonof enouo:h to drink barrels of cider made from the 
apples that grew on those trees. 

As for myself, after visiting a friend lately, — [Do 
remember all the time that this is the Professor's 
paper.] — I satisfied myself that I had better concede 
the fact that, — my contemporaries are not so young as 
they have been, — and that, — awkward as it is, — 
science and history agree in telling me that I can 
claim the immunities and must own the humiliations 
of the early stage of senility. Ah ! but we have all 
gone down the hill together. The dandies of my time 
have split their waistbands and taken to high low 
shoes. The beauties of my recollections — where are 
they ? They have run the gauntlet of the years as well 
as I. First the years pelted them with red roses till 
their cheeks were all on fire. By and by they began 
throwing white roses, and that morning flush passed 
away. At last one of the years threw a snow-ball, and 
after that no year let the poor girls pass without 
throwing snow-balls. And then came rougher mis- 
siles, — ice and stones ; and from time to time an 
arrow whistled, and down went one of the poor girls. 
So there are but few left ; and we don't call those few 
girls^ but — 

Ah, me ! here am I groaning just as the old Greek 
sighed At, at! and the old Roman, Eheu! I have no 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. IGl 

doubt we should die of sliaine and grief at the indigni- 
ties offered us by age, if it were not that we see so 
many others as badly as or worse off than ourselves. 
We always compare ourselves with our contempo- 
raries. 

[I was interrupted in my reading just here. Be- 
fore I began at the next breakfast, I read them these 
verses ; — I hope you will like them, and get a useful 
lesson from them.] 

THE LAST BLOSSOM. 

Though young no more, we still would dream 

Of beauty's dear deluding wiles; 
The leagues of life to graybeards seem 

Shorter than boyhood's lingering miles. 

Who knows a woman's wild caprice? 

It played with Goethe's silvered hair, 
And many a Holy Father's " niece " 

Has softly smoothed the papal chair. 

When sixty bids us sigh in vain 

To melt the heart of sweet sixteen, 
We think upon those ladies twain 

Who loved so well the tough old Dean. 

We see the Patriarch's wintry face, 

The maid of Egypt's dusky glow, 
And dream that Youth and Age embrace, 

As April violets fill with snow. 

Tranced in her Lord's Olympian smile 

His lotus-loving Memphian lies, — 
The musky daughter of the Nile 

With plaited liair and almond eyes. 

Mi<xht we but share one wild caress 
Ere life's autumnal blossoms fall. 



162 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

And Earth's brown, clinging lips impress 
The long cold kiss that waits us alll 

My bosom heaves, remembering yet 

The morning of that blissful day 
When Rose, the flower of spring, I met, 

And gave my raptured soul away. 

Flung from her eyes of purest blue, 

A lasso, with its leaping chain 
Light as a loop of larkspurs, flew 

Oer sense and spirit, heart and brain. 

Thou com' St to cheer my waning age, 

Sweet vision, waited for so long! 
Dove that would seek the poet's cage 

Lured by the magic breath of songl 

She blushes! Ah, reluctant maid, 

Love's drapeau rouge the truth has told; 

O'er girlhood's yielding barricade 

Floa-ts the great Leveller's crimson fold! 

Come to my arms! — love heeds not years. 

No frost the bud of passion knows. — 
Ha! what is this my frenzy hears ? 

A voice behind me uttered, — Rose I 

Sweet was her smile, — but not for me; 

Alas, Avhen woman looks too kind, 
Just turn your foolish head and see, — 

Some youth is walking close behind! 

As to giving up because the almanac or the Fam- 
ily-Bible says that it is about time to do it, I have no 
intention of doing any such things I grant you that 
I burn less carbon than some years ago. I see people 
of my standing really good for nothing, decrepit, 
effete, la levre inferieure dejd pendante^ with what 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 168 

little life they have left mainly concentrated in their 
epigastrium. But as the disease of old age is epi- 
demic, endemic, and sporadic, and everybody who 
lives long enough is sure to catch it, I am going to 
say, for the encouragement of such as need it, how I 
treat the malady in my own case. 

First. As I feel, tiiat, when I have anything to do 
there is less time for it than when I was younger, 1 
find that I give my attention more thoroughly, and 
use my time more economically than ever before ; so 
that I can learn anything twice as easily as in my ear- 
lier days. I am not, therefore, afraid to attack a new 
study. I took up a difficidt language a very few 
years ago with good success, and think of mathematics 
and metaphysics by-and-by. 

Secondly. I have opened my eyes to a good many 
neglected privileges and pleasures within my reach, 
and requiring only a little courage to enjoy them. 
You may well suppose it pleased me to find that old 
Cato was thinking of learning to play the fiddle, when 
I had deliberately taken it up in my old age, and sat- 
isfied myself that I could get much comfort, if not 
much music, out of it. 

Thirdly. I have found that some of those active 
exercises, which are commonly thought to belong to 
young folks only, may be enjoyed at a much later 
period. 

A young friend has lately written an admirable 
article in one of the journals, entitled, " Samts and 
their Bodies." Approving of his general doctrines, 
and grateful for his records of personal experience, I 
cannot refuse to add my own experimental confirma- 
tion of his eulogy of one particular form of active ex- 
ercise and amusement, namely, boating. For the past 



164 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

nine years, I have rowed about, during a good part of 
the summer, on fresh or salt water. My present fleet 
on the river Charles consists of three row-boats. 1. 
A small flat-bottomed skiff of the shape of a flat-iron, 
kept mainly to lend to boys. 2. A fancy " dory " for 
two pairs of sculls, in which I sometimes go out with 
my young folks. 3. My own particular water-sulky, 
a " skeleton " or " shell " race-boat, twenty-two feet 
long, with huge outriggers, which boat I pull with ten- 
foot sculls, — alone, of course, as it holds but one, and 
tips him out, if he does n't mind what he is about. In 
this I glide around the Back Bay, dovm the stream, 
up the Charles to Cambridge and Watertown, up the 
Mystic, round the wharves, in the wake of steamboats, 
which leave a swell after them delightful to rock 
upon ; I linger under the bridges, — those " caterpillar 
bridges," as my brother professor so happily called 
them ; rub against the black sides of old wood-schoon- 
ers ; cool down under the overhanging stern of some 
tall Indiaman ; stretch across to the Navy Yard, 
where the sentinel warns me off from the Ohio, — just 
as if I should hurt her by lying in her shadow ; then 
strike out into the harbor, where the water gets clear 
and the air smells of the ocean, — till all at once I 
remember, that, if a west wind blows up of a sudden, 
I shall drift along past the islands, out of sight of the 
dear old State-house, — plate, tumbler, knife and fork 
all waiting at home, but no chair drawn up at the 
table, — all the dear people waiting, waiting, waiting, 
while the boat is sliding, sliding, sliding into the great 
desert, where there is no tree and no fountain. As I 
don't want my wreck to be washed up on one of the 
beaches in company with devil' s-aprons, bladder- 
w^eeds, dead horse-shoes, and bleached crab-shells, I 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 165 

turn about and flap my long, narrow wings for home. 
When the tide is running out swiftly, I have a splen- 
did fight to get through the bridges, but always make 
it a rule to beat, — though I have been jammed up 
into pretty tight places at times, and was caught once 
between a vessel swinging round and the pier, until 
our bones (the boat's, that is) cracked as if we had 
been in the jaws of Behemoth. Then back to my 
moorings at the foot of the Common, off with the 
rowing-dress, dash under the green translucent wave, 
return to the garb of civilization, walk through my 
Garden, take a look at my elms on the Common, and^ 
reaching my habitat, in consideration of my advanced 
period of life, indulge in the Elysian abandonment of 
a huge recumbent chair. 

When I have established a pair of well-pronounced 
feathering-calluses on my thumbs, when I am in train- 
ing so that I can do my fifteen miles at a stretch with- 
out coming to grief in any way, when I can perform 
my mile in eight minutes or a little more, then I feel 
as if I had old Time's head in chancery, and could 
give it to him at my leisure. 

I do not deny the attraction of walking. I have 
bored this ancient city through and through in my 
daily travels, until I know it as an old inhabitant of a 
Cheshire knows his cheese. Why, it was I who, in 
the course of these rambles, discovered that remarka- 
ble avenue called Myrtle Street^ stretching in one long 
line from east of the Reservoir to a precipitous and 
rudely paved cliff which looks down on the grim abode 
of Science, and beyond it to the far hills ; a prome- 
nade so delicious in its repose, so cheerfully varied 
with glimpses down the northern slope into busy Cam- 
bridge Street with its iron river of the horse-railroad, 



166 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

and wheeled barges gliding back and forward over it, 
— so delightfully closing at its western extremity in 
sunny courts and passages where I know peace, and 
beauty, and virtue, and serene old age must be per- 
petual tenants, — so alluring to all who desire to take 
their daily stroll, in the words of Dr. Watts, — 

" Alike unknowing and unknown," — 

that nothing but a sense of duty would have prompted 
me to reveal the secret of its existence. I concede, 
therefore, that walking is an immeasurably fine inven- 
tion, of which old age ought constantly to avail it- 
self. 

Saddle-leather is in some respects even preferable 
to sole-leather. The principal objection to it is of a 
financial character. But you may be sure that Bacon 
and Sydenham did not recommend it for nothing. 
One's hepar^ or, in vulgar language, liver, — a ponder- 
ous organ, weighing some three or four pounds, — 
goes up and down like the dasher of a churn in the 
midst of the other vital arrangements, at every step of 
a trotting horse. The brains also are shaken up like 
coppers in a money-box. Riding is good, for those 
that are born with a silver-mounted bridle in their 
hand, and can ride as much and as often as they like, 
without thinking all the time they hear that steady 
grinding sound as the horse's jaws triturate with calm 
lateral movement the bank-bills and promises to pay 
upon which it is notorious that the profligate animal 
in question feeds day and night. 

Instead, however, of considering these kinds of 
exercise in this empirical way, I will devote a brief 
space to an examination of them in a more scientific 
form. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 167 

The pleasure of exercise is due first to a purely 
physical impression, and secondly to a sense of power 
in action. The first source of pleasure varies of course 
with our condition and the state of the surrounding 
circumstances ; the second with the amount and kind 
of power, and the extent and kind of action. In all 
forms of active exercise there are three powers simul- 
taneously in action, — the will, the muscles, and the 
intellect. Each of these predominates in different 
kinds of exercise. In walking, the will and muscles 
are so accustomed to work together and perform their 
task with so little expenditure of force, that the intel- 
lect is left comparatively free. The mental pleasure 
in walking, as such, is in the sense of power over all 
our moving machinery. But in riding, I have the ad- 
ditional pleasure of governing another will, and my 
muscles extend to the tips of the animal's ears and to 
his four hoofs, instead of stopping at my hands and 
feet. Now in this extension of my volition and my 
physical frame into another animal, my tyrannical in- 
stincts and my desire for heroic strength are at once 
gratified. When the horse ceases to have a will of 
his own and his muscles require no special attention 
on your part, then you may live on horseback as Wes- 
ley did, and write sermons or take naps, as you like. 
But you will observe, that, in riding on horseback 
you always have a feeling, that, after all, it is not you 
that do the work, but the animal, and this prevents the 
satisfaction from being complete. 

Now let us look at the conditions of rowing. I 
won't suppose you to be disgracing yourself in one of 
those miserable tubs, tugging in which is to rowing the 
true boat what riding a cow is to bestriding an Arab, 
You know the Esquimaux kayak (if that is the name 



168 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

of it), don't you? Look at that model of one over 
my door. Sharp, rather ? — On the contrary, it is a 
lubber to the one you and I must have ; a Dutch fish- 
wife to Psyche, contrasted with what I will tell you 
about. — Our boat, then, is something of the shape of 
a pickerel, as you look down upon his back, he lying 
in the sunshine just where the sharp edge of the water 
cuts in among the lily-pads. It is a kind of giant i^od^ 
as one may say, — tight everywhere, except in a little 
place in the middle, where you sit. Its length is from 
seven to ten yards, and as it is only from sixteen to 
thirty inches wide in its widest part, you understand 
why you want those " outriggers," or projecting iron 
frames with the rowlocks in which the oars play. My 
rowlocks are five feet apart ; double the greatest width 
of the boat. 

Here you are, then, afloat with a body a rod and a 
half long, with arms, or wings, as you may choose to 
call them, stretching more than twenty feet from tip 
to tip ; every volition of yours extending as perfectly 
into them as if your spinal cord ran down the centre 
strip of your boat, and the nerves of your arms tingled 
as far as the broad blades of your oars, — oars of 
spruce, balanced, leathered and ringed under your own 
special direction. This, in sober earnest, is the near- 
est approach to flying that man has ever made or per- 
haps ever will make. " As the hawk sails without 

" Since the days -when this was written the bicycle has ap- 
peared as the rival of the wherry. I have witnessed three ap- 
pearances of the pedal locomotive. The first was when I was a 
boy. (The machine was introduced into Great Britain from 
France about 1820.) Some of the Harvard College students 
who boarded in my neighborhood had these machines, then 
called velocipedes, on which they used to waddle along like so 
many ducks, their feet pushing against the ground, and looking 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 169 

flapping his pinions, so you drift with the tide when 
you will, in the most luxurious form of locomotion in 
dulged to an embodied spirit. But if your blood wants 
rousing, turn round that stake in the river, which you 
see a mile from here ; and when you come in in sixteen 
minutes (if you do, for we are old boys, and not 
champion scullers, you remember), then say if you be- 
gin to feel a little warmed up or not! You can row 
easily and gently all day, and you can row yourself 
blind and black in the face in ten minutes, just as you 
like. It has been long agreed that there is no way in 
which a man can accomplish so much labor with his 
muscles as in rowing. It is in the boat, then, that 
man finds the largest extension of his volitional and 
muscular existence ; and yet he may tax both of them 
so slightly, in that most delicious of exercises, that he 
shall mentally write his sermon, or his poem, or recall 
the remarks he has made in company and put them in 
form for the public, as well as in his easy-chair. 

as if they were perched on portable treadmills. They soon found 
that legs were made before velocipedes. Our grown-up young 
people may remember the second advent of the contrivance, 
now become a treadle-locomotive. There were " rinks " where 
this form of roller-skating had a brief run, and then legs again 
asserted their prior claim and greater convenience. At the 
Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia, in 1876, I first saw the 
modern bicycles, some of them, at least, from Coventry, Eng- 
land. Since that time the bicycle glides in and out everywhere, 
noiseless ae a serpent, 

And [wheels] rush in where [horses] fear to tread. 

The boat flies like a sea-bird with its long, narrow, outstretched 
pinions: the bicycle rider, like feathered Mercury, with his 
wings on his feet. There seems to be nothing left to perfect in 
the way of human locomotion but aerial swimming, which some 
fancy is to be a conquest of the future. 



170 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

I dare not publicly name the rare joys, the infinite 
delights, that intoxicate me on some sweet Jmie morn- 
ing, when the river and bay are smooth as a sheet of 
beryl-green silk, and I run along ripping it up with 
my knife-edged shell of a boat, the rent closing after 
me like those wounds of angels which Milton tells of, 
but the seam still shining for many a long rood be- 
hind me. To lie still over the Flats, where the waters 
are shallow, and see the crabs crawling and the scul- 
pins gliding busily and silently beneath the boat, — to 
rustle in through the long harsh grass that leads up 
some tranquil creek, — to take shelter from the sun- 
beams under one of the thousand-footed bridges, and 
look down its interminable colonnades, crusted with 
green and oozy growths, studded with minute bar- 
nacles, and belted with rings of dark mussels, while 
overhead streams and thunders that other river whose 
every wave is a himian soid flowing to eternity as the 
river below flows to the ocean, — lying there moored 
unseen, in loneliness so profound that the columns of 
Tadmor in the Desert could not seem more remote 
from life — the cool breeze on one's forehead, the 
stream whispering against the half-sunken pillars, — 
why should I tell of these things, that I should live to 
see my beloved haunts invaded and the waves black- 
ened with boats as with a swarm of water-beetles? 
What a city of idiots we must be not to have covered 
this glorious bay with gondolas and wherries, as we 
have just learned to cover the ice in winter with 
skaters ! 

I am satisfied that such a set of black-coated, stiff- 
jointed, soft-muscled, paste-complexioned youth as we 
can boast in our Atlantic cities never before sprang 
from loins of Anglo-Saxon lineage. Of the females 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 171 

that are the mates of these males I do not here speak. 
I preached my sermon from the lay-pulpit on this 
matter a good while ago. Of course, if you heard it, 
you know my belief is that the total climatic influences 
here are getting up a number of new patterns of hu- 
manity, some of which are not an improvement on the 
old model. Clipper-built, sharp in the bows, long in 
the spars, slender to look at, and fast to go, the ship, 
which is the great organ of our national life of rela- 
tion, is but a reproduction of the typical form which 
the elements impress upon its builder. All this we 
cannot help ; but we can make the best of these in- 
fluences, such as they are. We have a few good boat- 
men, — no good horsemen that I hear of, — I cannot 
speak for cricketing, — but as for any great athletic 
feat performed by a gentleman in these latitudes, soci- 
ety would drop a man who should run round the Com- 
mon in five minutes. Some of our amateur fencers, 
single-stick players, and boxers, we have no reason to 
be ashamed of. Boxing is rough play, but not too 
rough for a hearty young fellow. Anything is better 
than this white-blooded degeneration to which we all 
tend. 

I dropped in at a gentlemen's sparring exhibition 
only last evening. It did my heart good to see that 
there were a few young and youngish youths left who 
could take care of their own heads in case of emer- 
gency. It is a fine sight, that of a gentleman resolv- 
ing himself into the primitive constituents of his hu- 
manity. Here is a delicate young man now, with an 
intellectual countenance, a slight figure, a subpallid 
complexion, a most unassuming deportment, a mild 
adolescent in fact, that any Hiram or Jonathan from 
between the ploughtails would of course expect to 



172 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

handle witii perfect ease. Oh, he is taking off his 
gold-bowed spectacles ! Ah, he is divesting himself of 
his cravat ! Why, he is stripping off his coat ! Well, 
hers he is, sure enough, in a tight silk shirt, and with 
two things that look like batter puddings in the place 
of his fists. Now see that other fellow with another 
pair of batter puddings, — the big one with the broad 
shoulders ; he will certainly knock the little man's 
head off, if he strikes him. Feinting, dodging, stop- 
ping, hitting, countering, — little man's head not off 
yet. You might as well try to jump upon your own 
shadow as to hit the little man's intellectual features. 
He need n't have taken off the gold-bowed spectacles 
at all. Quick, cautious, shifty, nimble, cool, he catches 
all the fierce lunges or gets out of their reach, till his 
turn comes, and then, whack goes one of the batter 
puddings against the big one's ribs, and bang goes the 
other into the big one's face and, staggering, shuffling, 
slipping, tripping, collapsing, sprawling, down goes 
the big one in a miscellaneous bundle. — If my young 
friend, whose excellent article I have referred to, 
could only introduce the manly art of self-defence 
among the clergy, I am satisfied that we shoidd have 
better sermons and an infinitely less quarrelsome 
church-militant. A bout with the gloves would let off 
the ill-nature, and cure the indigestion, which, imited, 
have embroiled their subject in a bitter controversy. 
We should then often hear that a point of difference 
between an infallible and a heretic, instead of being 
vehemently discussed in a series of newspaper articles, 
had been settled by a friendly contest in several 
rounds, at the close of which the parties shook hands 
and appeared cordially reconciled. 

But boxing you and I are too old for, I am afraid. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 173 

I was for a moment tempted, by the contagion of 
muscular electricity last evening, to try the gloves 
with the Benicia Boy, who looked in as a friend to the 
noble art; but remembering that he had twice my 
weight and half my age, besides the advantage of his 
training, I sat still and said nothing. 

There is one other delicate point I wish to speak of 
with reference to old age. I refer to the use of diop- 
tric media which correct the diminished refractino' 
power of the hmnors of the eye, — in other words, 
spectacles. I don't use them. All I ask is a large, 
fair type, a strong daylight or gas-light, and one yard 
of focal distance, and my eyes are as good as ever. 
But if your eyes fail, I can tell you something encour- 
aging. There is now living in New York State an 
old gentleman who, perceiving his sight to fail, imme- 
diately took to exercising it on the finest print, and in 
this way fairly bullied Nature out of her foolish habit 
of taking liberties at five-and-forty, or thereabout. 
And now this old gentleman performs the most ex- 
traordinary feats with his pen, sho\ving that his eyes 
must be a pair of microscopes. I should be afraid to 
say to you how much he writes in the compass of a 
half -dime, — whether the Psalms or the Gospels, or 
the Psalms and the Gospels, I won't be positive. 

But now let me tell you this. If the time comes 
when you must lay down the fiddle and the bow, be- 
cause your fingers are too stiff, and drop the ten-foot 
sculls, because your arms are too weak, and, after dal- 
lying a while with eye-glasses, come at last to the un- 
disguised reality of spectacles, — if the time comes 
when that fire of life w^e spoke of has burned so low 
that where its flames reverberated there is only the 
sombre stain of regret, and where its coals glowed, 



174 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

only the white ashes that cover the embers of memory, 
— don't let your heart grow cold, and you may carry 
cheerfulness and love with you into the teens of your 
second century, if you can last so long. As our 
friend, the Poet, once said, in some of those old-fash- 
ioned heroics of his which he keeps for his private 
reading, — 

Call him not old, whose visionary brain 

Holds o'er the past its undivided reign. 

For him in vain the envious seasons roll 

Who bears eternal summer in his soul. 

If yet the minstrel's song, the poet's lay. 

Spring with her birds, or children with their play, 

Or maiden's smile, or heavenly dream of art 

Stir the few life-drops creeping round his heart, — 

Turn to the record where his years are told, — 

Count his gray hairs, — they cannot make him old! 

End of the Professor^ s paper. 

[The above essay was not read at one time, but in 
several instalments, and accompanied by various com- 
ments from different persons at the table. The com- 
pany were in the main attentive, with the exception of 
a little somnolence on the part of the old gentleman 
opposite at times, and a few sly, malicious questions 
about the " old boys " on the part of that forward 
young fellow who has figured occasionally, not always 
to his advantage, in these reports. 

On Sunday mornings, in obedience to a feeling I 
am not ashamed of, I have always tried to give a more 
appropriate character to our conversation. I have 
never read them my sermon yet, and I don't know 
that I shall, as some of them might take my convic- 
tions as a personal indignity to themselves. But hav- 
Lng read our company so much of the Professor's talk 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 175 

about age and other subjects connected with physical 
life, I took the next Sunday morning to repeat to 
them the following poem of his, which I have had by 
me some time. He calls it — I suppose for his pro- 
fessional friends — The Anatomist's Hymn; but I. 
shall name it — ] 

THE LIVING TEMPLE. 

Not in the world of ligbt alone, 

Where God has built his blazing throne, 

Nor yet alone in earth below, 

With belted seas that come and go, 

And endless isles of sunlit green, 

Is all thy Maker's glory seen: 

Look in upon thy wondrous frame, — 

Eternal wisdom still the same 1 

The smooth, soft air with pulse-like waves 
Flows murmuring through its hidden cavea 
Whose streams of brightening purple rush 
Fired with a new and livelier blush, 
While all their burden of decay 
The ebbing current steals away, 
And red with Nature's flame they start 
From the warm fountains of the heart. 

No rest that throbbing slave may ask, 
Forever quivering o'er his task, 
While far and wide a crimson jet 
Leaps forth to fill the woven net 
Which in unnumbered crossing tides 
The flood of burning life divides, 
Then kindling each decaying part 
Creeps back to find the throbbing heart. 

But warmed with that unchanging flame 
Behold the outward moving frame, 
Its living marbles jointed strong 
With ghstening band and silvery thono-, 



176 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

And linked to reason's guiding reins 
By myriad rings in trembling chains, 
Each graven with the threaded zone 
Which claims it as the master's own. 

See how yon beam of seeming white 
Is braided out of seven-hued light, 
Yet in those lucid globes no ray 
By any chance shall break astray. 
Hark how the rolling surge of sound, 
Arches and spirals circling round, 
Wakes the hushed spirit through thine esB* 
With music it is heaven to bear. 

Then mark the cloven sphere that holds 
All thought in its mysterious folds, 
That feels sensation's faintest thrill 
And flashes forth the sovereign will; 
Think on the stormy world that dwells 
Locked in its dim and clustering cells! 
The lightning gleams of power it sheds 
Along its slender glassy threads ! 

O Father ! grant thy love divine 
To make these mystic temples thine ! 
When wasting age and wearying strife 
Have sapped the leaning walls of life, 
When darkness gathers over all. 
And the last tottering pillars fall, 
Take the poor dust thy mercy warms 
And mould it into heavenly forms. 

/ 

^ VIII. 

[Spring has come. You will find some verses to 
that effect at the end of these notes. If you are an 
impatient reader, skip to them at once. In reading 
aloud, omit, if you please, the sixth and seventh 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 177 

verses. These are parenthetical and digressive, and, 
unless your audience is of superior intelligence, will 
confuse them. Many people can ride on horseback 
who find it hard to get on and to get off without as- 
sistance. One has to dismount from an idea, and get 
into the saddle again, at every parenthesis.] 

— The old gentleman who sits opposite, finding that 
spring had fairly come, mounted a white hat one day, 
and walked into the street. It seems to have been a 
premature or otherwise exceptionable exhibition, not 
unlike that commemorated by the late Mr. Bayly. 
When the old gentleman came home, he looked very 
red in the face, and complained that he had been 
"made sport of." By sympathizing questions, I 
learned from him that a boy had called him '^ old 
daddy," and asked him when he had his hat white- 
washed. 

This incident led me to make some observations at 
table the next morning, which I here repeat for the 
benefit of the readers of this record. 

— The hat is the vidnerable point of the artificial 
integument. I learned this in early boyhood. I was 
once equipped in a hat of Leghorn straw, having a 
brim of much wider dimensions than were usual at 
that time, and sent to school in that portion of my na- 
tive town which lies nearest to this metropolis. On 
my way I was met by a " Port-chuck," as we used to 
call the young gentlemen of that locality, and the fol- 
lowing dialogue ensued. 

The Port-chuch. Hullo, You-sir, joo know th' wuz 
gon-to be a race to-morrah ? 

Myself. No. Who 's gon-to run, 'n' wher 's 't gon- 
to be? 



178 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

The Port-chuck. Squire Mycall 'n' Doctor Wil- 
liams, round the brim o' your hat. 

These two much-respected gentlemen being the 
oldest inhabitants at that time, and the alleged race- 
course being out of the question, the Port-chuck also 
winking and thrusting his tongue into his cheek, I 
perceived that I had been trifled with, and the effect 
has been to make me sensitive and observant respect- 
ing this article of dress ever since. Here is an axiom 
or two relating to it. 

A hat which has been pojrped^ or exjiloded by being 
sat down upon, is never itself again afterwards. 

It is a favorite illusion of sangmne natures to be- 
lieve the contrary. 

Shabby gentility has nothing so characteristic as its 
hat. There is always an unnatural calmness about 
its nap, and an unwholesome gloss, suggestive of a 
wet brush. 

The last effort of decayed fortune is expended in 
smoothing its dilapidated castor. The hat is the ulti- 
mum moriens of " respectability." 

— The old gentleman took all these remarks and 
maxims very pleasantly, saying, however, that he had 
forgotten most of his French except the word for po- 
tatoes, — pummies de tare. — Ultimiim jnoriens^ I 
told liini, is old Italian, and signifies last thing to die. 
With this explanation he was well contented, and 
looked quite calm when I saw him afterwards in the 
entry with a black hat on his head and the white one 
in his hand. 

— I think myself fortunate in having the Poet and 
the Professor for my intimates. We are so much to< 
gether, that we no doubt think and talk a good deal 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 179 

alike ; yet our points of view are in many respects in- 
dividual and peculiar. You know me well enough by 
this time. I have not talked with you so long for 
nothing and therefore I don't think it necessary to 
draw my own portrait. But let me say a word or two 
about my friends. 

The Professor considers himself, and I consider 
him, a very useful and worthy kind of drudge. I 
think he has a pride in his small technicalities. I 
know that he has a great idea of fidelity ; and 
though I suspect he laughs a. little inwardly at times, 
at the grand airs " Science " puts on, as she stands 
marking time, but not getting on, while the trumpets 
are blowing and the big drums beating, — yet I am 
sure he has a liking for his specialty, and a respect for 
its cultivators. 

But I'll tell you what the Professor said to the 
Poet the other day. — My boy, said he, I can work a 
great deal cheaper than you, because I keep all my 
goods in the lower story. You have to hoist yours 
into the upper chambers of the brain, and let them 
down again to your customers. I take mine in at the 
level of the ground, and send them off from my door- 
step' almost without lifting. I tell you, the higher a 
man has to carry the raw material of thought before 
he works it up, the more it costs him in blood, nerve, 
and muscle. Coleridge knew all this very well when 
he advised every literary man to have a profession. 

— Sometimes I like to talk with one of them, and 
sometimes with the other. After a while I get tired 
of both. When a fit of intellectual disgust comes over 
me, I will tell you what I have found admirable as a 
diversion, in addition to boating and other amuse- 
ments which I have spoken of, — that is, working at 



180 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

my carpenter's-bench. Some mechanical employment 
is the greatest possible relief, after the purely in- 
tellectual faculties begin to tire. When I was quaran- 
tined once at Marseilles, I got to work immediately at 
carving a wooden wonder of loose rings on a stick, and 
got so interested in it, that, when we were let out, I 
'' regained my freedom with a sigh," because my toy 
was unfinished. 

There are long seasons when I talk only with the 
Professor, and others when I give myself wholly up 
to the Poet. Now that my winter's work is over and 
spring is with us, I feel naturally drawn to the Poet's 
company. I don't know anybody more alive to life 
than he is. The passion of poetry seizes on him every 
spring, he says, — yet oftentimes he complains, that 
when he feels most, he can sing least. 

Then a fit of despondency comes over him. — I feel 
ashamed sometimes, — said he, the other day, — to 
think how far my worst songs fall below my best. It 
sometimes seems to me, as I know it does to others 
who have told me so, that they ought to be all best, — 
if not in actual execution, at least in plan and motive. 
I am grateful — he continued — for all such criti- 
cisms. A man is always pleased to have his most seri- 
ous efforts praised, and the highest aspect of his na- 
ture get the most sunshine. 

Yet I am sure, that, in the nature of things, many 
minds must change their key now and then, on pen= 
alty of getting out of tune or losing their voices, Y013 
know, I suppose, — he said, — what is meant by com- 
plementary colors ? You know the effect, too, which 
the prolonged impression of any one color has on the 
retina. If you close your eyes after looking steadily 
at a red object, you see a green image. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 181 

It is SO with many minds, — I will not say with all. 
After looking at one aspect of external nature, or of 
any form of beauty or truth, when they turn away, 
the com'plementary aspect of the same object stamps 
itself irresistibly and automatically upon the mind. 
Shall they give expression to this secondary mental 
state, or not ? 

When I contemplate — said my friend, the Poet — 
the infinite largeness of comprehension belonging to 
the Central Intellio'ence, how remote the creative con- 
ception is from all scholastic and ethical formulae^ I 
am led to think that a healthy mind ought to change 
its mood from time to time, and come down from its 
noblest condition, — never, of course, to degrade it- 
self by dwelling upon what is itself debasing, but to 
let its lower faculties have a chance to air and exercise 
themselves. After the first and second floor have been 
out in the bright street dressed in all their splendors, 
shall not our humble friends in the basement have 
their holiday, and the cotton velvet and the thin- 
skinned jewelry — simple adornments, but befitting 
the station of those who wear them — show them- 
selves to the crowd, who think them beautiful, as they 
ought to, though the people up-stairs know that they 
are cheap and perishable ? 

— I don't know that I may not bring the Poet 
here, some day or other, and let him speak for him- 
self. Still I think I can tell you what he says quite 
as well as he could do it. — Oh, — he said to me, one 
^^y^ — I ^11^ but a hand-organ man, — say rather, a 
hand-organ. Life turns the winch, and fancy or ac- 
cident pulls out the stops. I come under your win- 
dows, some fine spring morning, and play you one of 
my adagio movements, and some of you say, — This 



182 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

is goodj — play us so always. But, dear friends, if 1 
did not change the stoj) sometimes, the machine would 
wear out in one part and rust in another. How easily 
this or that tune flows ! — you say, — there must be 
no end of just such melodies in him. — I will open 
the poor machine for you one moment, ana you shall 
look. — Ah ! Every note marks where a spur of 
steel has been driven in. It is easy to grind out the 
song, but to plant these bristling points which make it 
was the painful task of time. 

I don't like to say it, — he continued, — but poets 
commonly have no larger stock of tunes than hand- 
organs ; and when you hear them piping up under 
your window, you know pretty well what to expect. 
The more stops, the better. Do let them all be pulled 
out in their turn ! 

So spoke my friend, the Poet, and read me one of 
his stateliest songs, and after it a gay chanson^ and 
then a string of epigrams. All true, — he said, — 
all flowers of his soul; only one with the corolla 
spread, and another with its disk half opened, and the 
third with the heart-leaves covered up and only a 
petal or two showing its tip through the calyx. The 
water-lily is the type of the poet's soul, — he told me. 

— What do you think, Sir, — said the divinity- 
student, — opens the souls of poets most fully ? 

Why, there must be the internal force and the ex- 
ternal stimulus. Neither is enough by itself. A rose 
will not flower in the dark, and a fern will not flower 
anywhere. 

What do I think is the true sunshine that opens 
the poet's corolla ? — I don't like to say. They spoil 
a good many, I am afraid ; or at least they shine on a 
good many that never come to anything. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 183 

Who are they ? — said the schoolmistress. 

Women. Their love first inspires the poet, and 
their praise is his best reward. 

The schoolmistress reddened a little, but looked 
pleased. — Did I really think so ? — I do think so ; I 
never feel safe until I have pleased them ; I don't 
think they are the first to see one's defects, but they 
are the first to catch the color and fragrance of a true 
poem. Fit the same intellect to a man and it is a 
bow-string, — to a woman and it is a harp-string. 
She is vibratile and resonant all over, so she stirs with 
slighter musical tremblings of the air about her. — 
Ah, me ! — said my friend, the Poet, to me, the other 
day, — what color would it not have given to my 
thoughts, and what thrice-washed whiteness to my 
words, had I been fed on women's praises! I should 
have grown like Marvell's fawn, — 

" Lilies without; roses within ! " 

But then, — he added, — we all think, if so and so, we 
should have been this or that, as you were saying the 
other day, in those rhymes of yours. 

— I don't think there are many poets in the sense 
of creators ; but of those sensitive natures which reflect 
themselves naturally in soft and melodious words, 
pleading for sympathy with their joys and sorrows, 
every literature is full. Nature carves with her own 
hands the brain which holds the creative imagination, 
but she casts the over-sensitive creatures in scores 
from the same mould. 

There are two kinds of poets, just as there are two 
kinds of blondes. [Movement of curiosity among our 
ladies at table. — Please to tell us about those blondes, 
said the schoolmistress.] W»hy, there are blondes 



184 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

who are such simply hj deficiency of coloring matter, 
— negative or washed blondes, arrested by Nature on 
the way to become albinesses. There are others that 
are shot through with golden light, with tawny or ful- 
vous tinges in various degree, — positive or stained 
blondes, dipped in yellow sunbeams, and as imlike in 
their mode of being to the others as an orange is un- 
like a snowball. The albino-style carries with it a 
wide pupil and a sensitive retina. The other, or the 
leonine blonde, has an opaline fire in her clear eye, 
which the brunette can hardly match with her quick 
glittering glances. 

Just so we have the great sun-kindled, constructive 
imaginations, and a far more numerous class of poets 
who have a certain kind of moonlight-genius given 
them to compensate for their imperfection of nature. 
Their want of mental coloring-matter makes them 
sensitive to those impressions which stronger minds 
neglect or never feel at all. Many of them die young, 
and all of them are tinged with melancholy. There 
is no more beautiful illustration of the principle of 
compensation which marks the Divine benevolence 
than the fact that some of the holiest lives and some 
of the sweetest songs are the growth of the infirmity 
which unfits its subject for the rougher duties of life. 
When one reads the life of Cowper, or of Keats, or 
of Lucretia and Margaret Davidson, — of so many 
gentle, sweet natures, born to weakness, and mostly 
dying before their time, — one cannot help thinking 
that the human race dies out singing, like the swan in 
the old story. The French poet, Gilbert, who died at 
the H6tel Dieu, at the age of twenty-nine, — (killed 
by a key in his throat, which he had swallowed when 
delirious in consequence* of a fall), — this poor fellow 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 185 

was a very good example of the poet by excess of 
sensibility. I found, the other day, that some of my 
literary friends had never heard of him, though I 
suppose few educated Frenchmen do not know the 
lines which he wrote, a week before his death, upon a 
mean bed in the great hospital of Paris. 

♦* An banquet de la vie, infortune convive 
J'apparus un jour, et je meurs; 
Je meurs, et sur ma tombe, oil lentement j 'arrive 
Nul ne viendra verser des pleurs." 

At life's gay banquet placed, a poor unhappy guest, 

One day I pass, then disappear ; 
I die, and on the tomb where I at length shall rest 

No friend shall come to shed a tear. 

You remember the same thing in other words some- 
where in Kirke White's poems. It is the burden of 
the plaintive songs of all these sweet albino-poets. " I 
shall die and be forgotten, and the world will go on 
just as if I had never been ; — and yet how I have 
loved I how I have longed ! how I have aspired ! " 
And so singing, their eyes grow brighter and brighter, 
and their features thinner and thinner, until at last 
the veil of flesh is threadbare, and, still singing, they 
drop it and pass onward. 

— Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The Angel 
of Life winds them up once for all, then closes the 
case, and gives the key into the hand of the Angel of 
the Resurrection. 

Tic-tac ! tic-tac ! go the wheels of thought ; our will 
cannot stop them ; they cannot stop themselves ; sleep 
cannot still them ; madness only makes them go 
faster ; death alone can break into the case, and, seiz- 



186 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

ing the ever-swinging pendulum, which we call the 
heart, silence at last the clicking of the terrible es- 
capement we have carried so long beneath our wrin- 
kled foreheads. 

If we could only get at them, as we lie on our pil<= 
lows and coimt the dead beats of thought after thought 
and image after image jarring through the overtired 
organ ! Will nobody block those wheels, uncouple 
that pinion, cut the string that holds those weights, 
blow up the infernal machine with gimpowder? What 
a passion comes over us sometimes for silence and 
rest ! ■ — that this dreadful mechanism, unwinding the 
endless tapestry of time, embroidered with spectral 
figures of life and death, could have but one brief hol- 
iday ! Who can wonder that men swing themselves 
off from beams in hempen lassos ? — that they jump 
off from parapets into the swift and gurgling waters 
beneath ? — that they take counsel of the grim friend 
who has but to utter his one peremptory monosyllable 
and the restless machine is shivered as a vase that is 
dashed upon a marble floor? Under that building 
which we pass every day there are strong dungeons, 
where neither hook, nor bar, nor bed-cord, nor drink- 
ing-vessel from which a sharp fragment may be shat- 
tered, shall by any chance be seen. There is nothing 
for it, when the brain is on fire with the whirling of its 
wheels, but to spring against the stone wall and silence 
them with one crash. Ah, they remembered that, — 
the kind city fathers, — and the walls are nicely pad- 
ded, so that one can take such exercise as he likes 
without damaging himself on the very plain and ser- 
viceable upholstery. If anybody would only contrive 
some kind of a lever that one could thrust in among 
the works of this horrid automaton and check them, 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 187 

or alter their rate of going, what would the world give 
for the discovery ? 

— From half a dime to a dime, according to the 
style of the place and the quality of the liquor, — said 
the young fellow whom they call John. 

You speak trivially, but not unwisely, — I said. 
Unless the will maintain a certain control over these 
movements, which it cannot stop, but can to some ex- 
tent regulate, men are very apt to try to get at the 
machine by some indirect system of leverage or other. 
They clap on the brakes by means of opium ; they 
change the maddening monotony of the rhythm by 
means of fermented liquors. It is because the brain 
is locked up and we cannot touch its movement di- 
rectly, that we thrust these coarse tools in through any 
crevice, by which they may reach the interior, and so 
alter its rate of going for a while, and at last spoil the 
machine. 

Men who exercise chiefly those faculties of the mind 
which work independently of the will, — poets and 
artists, for instance, who follow their imagination in 
their creative moments, instead of keeping it in hand 
as your logicians and practical men do with their 
reasoning faculty, — such men are too apt to call in 
the mechanical appliances to help them govern their 
intellects. 

— He means they get drunk, — said the yoimg fel- 
low already alluded to by name. 

Do you think men of true genius are apt to indulge 
in the use of inebriating fluids ? — said the divinity- 
student. 

If you think you are strong enough to bear what I 
am going to say, — I replied, — I will talk to you 
about this. But mind, now, these are the things that 



188 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

some foolish people call dangerous subjects, — as ii 
these vices which burrow into people's souls, as the 
Guinea-worm burrows into the naked feet of West- 
Indian slaves, would be more mischievous when seen 
than out of sight. Now the true way to deal with 
those obstinate animals, which are a dozen feet long, 
some of them, and no bigger than a horse hair, is to 
get a piece of silk round their Jieads^ and pull them 
out very cautiously. If you only break them off, they 
grow worse than ever, and sometimes kill the person 
who has the misfortune to harbor one of them. 
Whence it is plain that the first thing to do is to find 
out where the head lies. 

Just so of all the vices, and particularly of this vice 
of intemperance. What is the head of it, and where 
does it lie ? For you may depend upon it, there is not 
one of these vices that has not a head of its own, — 
an intelligence, — a meaning, — a certain virtue, I 
was going to say, — but that might, perhaps, sound 
paradoxical. I have heard an immense number of 
moral physicians lay down the treatment of moral 
Guinea-worms, and the vast majority of them would 
always insist that the creature had no head at aU, but 
was all body and tail. So I have found a very com- 
mon result of their method to be that the string 
slipped, or that a piece only of the creature was 
broken off, and the worm soon grew agam, as bad as 
ever. The truth is, if the Devil could only appear in 
church by attorney, and make the best statement that 
the facts would bear him out in doing on behalf of his 
special virtues (what we commonly call vices), the in- 
fluence of good teachers would be much greater than 
it is. For the arguments by which the Devil prevails 
are precisely the ones that the Devil-queller most 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 189 

rarely answers. The way to argiie down a vice is not 
to tell lies about it, — to say that it has no attractions, 
when everybody knows that it has, — but rather to let 
it make out its case just as it certainly will in the mo- 
ment of temptation, and then meet it with the weapons 
furnished by the Divine armory. Ithuriel did not spit 
the toad on his spear, you remember, but touched him 
with it, and the blasted angel took the sad glories of 
his true shape. If he had shown fight then, the 
fair spirits would have known how to deal with him. 

That all spasmodic cerebral action is an evil is not 
perfectly clear. Men get fairly intoxicated with mu- 
sic, with poetry, with religious excitement, — oftenest 
with love. Ninon de I'Enclos said she was so easily 
excited that her soup intoxicated her, and convalescents 
have been made tipsy by a beef-steak. 

Th'^re are forms and stages of alcoholic exaltation 
which, in themselves, and without regard to their con- 
sequences, might be considered as positive improve- 
ments of the persons affected. When the sluggish in- 
tellect is roused, the slow speech quickened, the cold 
nature warmed, the latent sympathy developed, the 
flagging spirit kindled, — before the trains of thought 
become confused, or the will perverted, or the muscles 
relaxed, — just at the moment when the whole human 
zoophyte flowers out like a full-blown rose, and is ripe 
for the subscription-paper or the contribution-box, — 
it would be hard to say that a man was, at that very 
time, worse, or less to be loved, than when driving a 
hard bargain with all his meaner wits about him. 
The difficulty is, that the alcoholic virtues don't wash ; 
but until the water takes their colors out, the tints are 
very much like those of the true celestial stuff. 

[Here I was interrupted by a question which I am 



190 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

very unwilling to report, but have confidence enough 
in those friends who examine these records to commit 
to their candor. 

A person at table asked me whether I " went in for 
rum as a steady drink ? " ^ — His manner made the 
question highly offensive, but I restrained myself, and 
answered thus : — ] 

Rum I take to be the name which unwashed mor- 
alists apply alike to the product distilled from mo- 
lasses and the noblest juices of the vineyard. Bur- 
gundy " in all its sunset glow" is rum. Champagne, 
soul of " the foaming grape of Eastern France," is 
rum. Hock, which our friend, the Poet, speaks of as 
" The Rhine's breastmilk, gushing cold and bright, 
Pale as the moon, and maddening as her light," 

is rum. Sir, I repudiate the loathsome vulgarism as 
an insult to the first miracle wrought by the Fomider 
of our religion ! I address myself to the company. — 
I believe in temperance, nay, almost in abstinence, as 
a rule for healthy people. I trust that I practice 
both. But let me tell you, there are companies of 
men of genius into which I sometimes go, where the 
atmosphere of intellect and sentiment is so much more 
stimulating than alcohol, that, if I thought fit to take 
wine, it would be to keep me sober. 

Among the gentlemen that I have kno^vn, few, if 
any, were ruined by drinking. My few drimken ac- 
quaintances were generally ruined before they became 
dnmkards. The habit of drinking is often a vice, no 
doubt, — sometimes a misfortune, — as when an al- 
■paost irresistible hereditary propensity exists to in- 
dulge in it, — but of tenest of all a punishment. 

Empty heads, — heads without ideas in wholesome 
variety and sufficient number to furnish food for the 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 191 

mental clockwork, — ill-regulated heads, where the 
faculties are not under the control of the will, — these 
are the ones that hold the brains which their owners 
are so apt to tamper with, by introducing the appli- 
ances we have been talking about. Now, when a 
gentleman's brain is empty or ill-regulated, it is, to a 
great extent, his own fault ; and so it is simple retri- 
bution, that, while he lies slothfuUy sleeping or aim- 
lessly dreaming, the fatal habit settles on him like a 
vampire, and sucks his blood, fanning him all the 
while with its hot wings into deeper slumber or idler 
dreams ! I am not such a hard-souled being as to 
apply this to the neglected poor, who have had no 
chance to fill their heads with wholesome ideas, and 
to be taught the lesson of self-government. I trust the 
tariff of Heaven has an ad valorem scale for them, — 
and all of us. 

But to come back to poets and artists ; — if they 
really are more prone to the abuse of stimulants, — 
and I fear that this is true, — the reason of it is only 
too clear. A man abandons himself to a fine frenzy, 
and the power which flows through him, as I once ex- 
plained to you, makes him the medium of a great 
poem or a great picture. The creative action is not 
voluntary at all, but automatic ; we can only put the 
mind into the proper attitude, and wait for the wind, 
that blows where it listeth, to breathe over it. Thus 
the true state of creative genius is allied to reverie^ 
or dreaming. If mind and body were both healthy and 
had food enough and fair play, I doubt whether any 
men would be more temperate than the imaginative 
classes. But body and mind often flag, — perhaps 
they are ill-made to begin with, underfed with bread 
or ideas, overworked, or abused in some way. The 



192 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

automatic action, by which genius wrought its won- 
ders, fails. There is only one thing which can rouse 
the machine ; not will, — that cannot reach it, nothing 
but a ruinous agent, which hurries the wheels a while 
and soon eats out the heart of the mechanism. The 
dreaming faculties are always the dangerous ones, be- 
cause their mode of action can be imitated by artificial 
excitement ; the reasoning ones are safe, because they 
imply continued voluntary effort. 

I think you will find it true, that, before any vice 
can fasten on a man, body, mind, or moral nature 
must be debilitated. The mosses and fungi gather on 
sickly trees, not thriving ones ; and the odious para- 
sites which fasten on the hmnan frame choose that 
which is already enfeebled. Mr. Walker, the hygeian 
hmnorist, declared that he had such a healthy skin it 
was impossible for any impurity to stick to it, and 
maintained that it was an absurdity to wash a face 
which was of necessity always clean. I don't know 
how much fancy there was in this ; but there is no 
fancy in saying that the lassitude of tired-out opera- 
tives, and the languor of imaginative natures in their 
periods of collapse, and the vacuity of minds untrained 
to labor and discipline, fit the soul and body for the 
germination of the seeds of intemperance. 

Whenever the wandering demon of Drunkenness 
finds a ship adrift, — no steady wind in its sails, no 
thoughtful pilot directing its course, — he steps on 
board, takes the helm, and steers straight for the 
maelstrom. 

— I wonder if you know the terrible smile f [The 
young fellow whom they call John winked very hard, 
and made a jocular remark, the sense of which seemed 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 193 

to depend on some double meaning of the word smile. 
The company was curious to know what I meant.] 

There are persons — I said — who no sooner come 
within sight of you than they begin to smile, with an 
uncertain movement of the mouth, which conveys the 
idea that they are thinking about themselves, and 
thinking, too, that you are thinking they are think- 
ing about themselves, — and so look at you with a 
wretched mixture of self-consciousness, awkwardness, 
and attempts to carry off both, which are betrayed by 
the cowardly behavior of the eye and the tell-tale 
weakness of the lips that characterize these imfor- 
tunate beings. 

— Why do you call them unfortunate. Sir ? — asked 
the divinity-student. 

Because it is evident that the consciousness of some 
imbecility or other is at the bottom of this extraordi- 
nary expression. I don't think, however, that these 
persons are commonly fools. I have known a number, 
and all of them were intelligent. I think nothing 
conveys the idea of underhreeding more than this 
self-betraying smile. Yet I think this peculiar habit 
as well as that of meaningless blushing may be fallen 
into by very good people who meet often, or sit op- 
posite each other at table. A true gentleman's face 
is infinitely removed from all such paltriness, — calm- 
eyed, firm-mouthed. I think Titian understood the 
look of a gentleman as well as anybody that ever livedo 
The portrait of a young man holding a glove in his 
hand, in the Gallery of the Louvre, if any of you have 
seen that collection, will remind you of what I mean. 

— Do I think these people know the peculiar look 
they have ? — I cannot say ; I hope not ; I am afraid 
they would never forgive me, if they did. The worst 



194 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

of it is, the trick is catching ; when one meets one of 
these fellows, he feels a tendency to the same mani- 
festation. The Professor tells me there is a muscular 
slip, a dependence of the iiilaty^ma myoides^ which is 
called the risorius Santorini. 

— Say that once more, — exclaimed the young fel- 
low mentioned above. 

The Professor says there is a little fleshy slip called 
Santorini's laughing muscle. I would have it cut 
out of my face, if I were born with one of those con- 
stitutional grins upon it. Perhaps I am uncharita- 
ble in my judgment of those sour-looking people I 
told you of the other day, and of these smiling folks. 
It may be that they are born with these looks, as other 
people are with more generally recognized deformities. 
Both are bad enough, but I had rather meet three of 
the scowlers than one of the smilers. 

— There is another unfortunate way of looking, 
which is peculiar to that amiable sex we do not like to 
find fault with. There are some very pretty, but, un- 
happily, very ill-bred women, who don't understand 
the law of the road with regard to handsome faces. 
!Nature and custom would, no doubt, agree in conced- 
ing to all males the right of at least two distinct looks 
at every comely female comitenance, without any in- 
fraction of the rules of courtesy or the sentiment of 
respect. The first look is necessary to define the per- 
son of the individual one meets so as to recognize an 
acquaintance. Any unusual attraction detected in a 
first glance is a sufficient apology for a second, — not 
a prolonged and impertinent stare, but an appreciating 
homage of the eyes, such as a stranger may inoffen- 
sively yield to a passing image. It is astonishing how 
morbidly sensitive some vulgar beauties are to the 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 195 

slightest demonstration of this kind. When a lady 
walks the streets, she leaves her virtuous-indignation 
countenance at home ; she knows well enough that the 
street is a picture-gallery, where pretty faces framed 
in pretty bonnets are meant to be seen, and everybody 
has a right to see them. 

— When we observe how the same features and 
style of person and character descend from generation 
to generation, we can believe that some inherited weak- 
ness may account for these peculiarities. Little snap- 
ping-turtles snap — so the great naturalist tells us — 
before they are fairly out of the egg-shell. I am sat- 
isfied, that, much higher up in the scale of life, char- 
acter is distinctly shown at the age of — 2 or — 3 
months. 

— My friend, the Professor, has been full of eggs 
lately. [This remark excited a burst of hilarity which 
I did not allow to interrupt the course of my observa- 
tions.] He has been reading the great book where 
he found the fact about the little snapping-turtles men- 
tioned above. Some of the things ho has told me havQ 
suggested several odd analogies enough. 

There are half a dozen men, or so, who carry in 
their brains the ovarian eggs of the next generation's 
or century's civilization. These eggs are not ready to 
be laid in the form of books as yet ; some of them are 
hardly ready to be put into the form of talk. But as 
rudimentary ideas or inchoate tendencies, there they 
are ; and these are what must form the future. A 
man's general notions are not good for much, unless 
he has a crop of these intellectual ovarian eggs in his 
own brain, or knows them as they exist in the minds 
of others. One must be in the Jiahit of talking with 
such persons to get at these rudimentary germs of 



196 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

thought ; for their development is necessarily impeiv 
feet, and they are moulded on new patterns, which 
must be long and closely studied. But these are the 
men to talk with. No fresh truth ever gets into a 
book. 

— A good many fresh lies get in, anyhow, — said 
one of the company. 

I proceeded in spite of the interruption. — All ut- 
tered thought, my friend, the Professor, says, is of the 
nature of an excretion. Its materials have been taken 
in, and have acted u23on the system, and been reacted 
on by it ; it has circulated and done its office in one 
mind before it is given out for the benefit of others. 
It may be milk or venom to other minds ; but, in 
either case, it is something which the producer has 
had the use of and can part with. A man instinct- 
ively tries to get rid of his thought in conversation or 
in print so soon as it is matured ; but it is hard to get 
at it as it lies imbedded, a mere potentiality, the germ 
of a germ, in his intellect. 

— Where are the brains that are fullest of these 
ovarian eggs of thought ? — I decline mentioning in- 
dividuals. The producers of thought, who are few, 
the " jobbers " of thought, who are many, and the re- 
tailers of thought, who are numberless, are so mixed 
up in the popular apprehension, that it would be hope- 
less to try to separate them before opinion has had 
time to settle. Follow the course of opinion on the 
great subjects of human interest for a few generations 
or centuries, get its parallax, map out a small arc of 
its movement, see where it tends, and then see who is 
in advance of it or even with it ; the world calls him 
hard names, probably ; but if you would find the ova 
of the future, you must look into the folds of his cere- 
bral convolutions. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 197 

[The divinity-student looked a Kttle puzzled at this 
suggestion, as if he did not see exactly where he was 
to come out, if he computed his arc too nicely. I 
think it possible it might cut off a few corners of his 
present belief, as it has cut off martyr-burning and 
witch-hanging ; — but time will show, — time will 
show, as the old gentleman opposite says.] 

— Oh, — here is that copy of verses I told you 
about. 

SPRING HAS COME. 

Intra Muros. 

The sunbeams, lost for half a year, 

Slant through my pane their morning rays 

For dry Northwesters cold and clear, 
The East blows in its thin blue haze. 

And first the snowdrop's bells are seen, 
Then close against the sheltering wall 

The tulip's horn of dusky green, 
The peony's dark unfolding ball. 

The golden- chaliced crocus burns; 

The long narcissus-blades appear; 
The cone-beaked hyacinth returns, 

And lights her blue-flamed chandelier. 

The willow's whistling lashes, wrung 
By the wild winds of gusty March, 

With sallow leaflets lightly strung. 
Are swaying by the tufted larch. 

The elms have robed their slender spray 
With full-blown flower and embryo leaf; 

Wide o'er the clasping arch of day 
Soars like a cloud their hoary chief. 

-x=-[See the proud tulip's flaunting cup, 
That flames in glory for an hour, — 



198 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLK 

Behold it withering, — then look up, — 
How meek the forest-monarch's flower! — 

Wlien wake the violets, Winter dies; 

When sprout the elm-buds, Spring is near; 
When lilacs blossom, Summer cries, 

*' Bud, little roses! Spring is here! ''] 

The windows blush with fresh bouquets, 
Cut with the May-dew on their lips; 

The radish all its bloom displays, 
Pink as Aurora's finger-tips. 

Nor less the flood of light that showers 
On beauty's changed corolla-shades, — 

The walks are gay as bridal bowers 
With rows of many-petalled maids. 

The scarlet shell-fish click and clash 
In the blue barrow where they slide, 

The horseman, proud of streak and splash, 
Creeps homeward from his morning ride. 

Here comes the dealer's awkward string, 
With neck in rope and tail in knot, — 

Rough colts, with careless country-swing. 
In lazy walk or slouching trot. 

— Wild filly from the mountain-side, 
Doomed to the close and chafing thills, 

Lend me thy long, untiring stride 
To seek with thee thy western hills! 

I hear the whispering voice of Spring, 
The thrush's trill, the cat-bird's cry, 

Like some poor bird with prisoned wing 
That sits and sings, but longs to fly. 

Oh for one spot of living green, — 

One little spot where leaves can grow, — 
, To love unblamed, to walk unseen. 

To dream above, to sleep below! 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 199 



IX. // 

\_Aqui estd encerrada el alma del licenciado Pedro 
Garcias. 

If I should ever make a little book out of these 
papers, which I hope you are not getting tired of, I 
suppose I ought to save the above sentence for a motto 
on the title-page. But I want it now, and must use 
it. I need not say to you that the words are Spanish, 
nor that they are to be found in the short Introduction 
to " Gil Bias," nor that they mean, " Here lies buried 
the soul of the licentiate Pedro Garcias." 

I warned all young people off the premises when 
I began my notes referring to old age. I must be 
equally fair with old people now. They are earnestly 
requested to leave this paper to young persons from 
the age of twelve to that of four-score years and ten, 
at which latter period of life I am sure that I shall 
have at least one youthful reader. You know well 
enough what I mean by youth and age ; — something 
in the soul, which has no more to do with the color of 
the hair than the vein of gold in a rock has to do with 
the grass a thousand feet above it. 

I am growing bolder as I write. I think it requires 
not only youth, but genius, to read this paper. I don't 
mean to imply that it required any whatsover to talk 
what I have here written down. It did demand a 
certain amount of memory, and such command of the 
English tongue as is given by a common school educa- 
tion. So much I do claim. But here I have related, 
at length, a string of trivialities. You must have the 
imagination of a poet to transfigure them. These lit- 
tle colored patches are stains upon . the windows of a 



200 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

human soul ; stand on the outside, they are but duU 
and meaningless spots of color ; seen from within, they 
are glorified shapes with empurpled wings and sun- 
bright aureoles. 

My hand trembles when I offer you this. Many 
times I have come bearing flowers such as my garden 
grew ; but now I offer you this poor, brown, homely 
growth, you may cast it away as worthless. And yet, 
— and yet, — it is something better than flowers ; it is 
a seed-ca2Jsule. Many a gardener will cut you a bou- 
quet of his choicest blossoms for small fee, but he does 
not love to let the seeds of his rarest varieties go out 
of his own hands. 

It is by little things that we know ourselves ; a soul 
would very probably mistake itself for another, when 
once disembodied, were it not for individual experi- 
ences which differ from those of others only in details 
seemingly trifling. All of us have been thirsty thou- 
sands of times, and felt, with Pindar, that water was 
the best of things. I alone, as I think, of all mankind, 
remember one particidar pailful of water, flavored 
with the white-pine of which the pail was made, and 
the brown mug out of which one Edmund, a red-faced 
and curly-haired boy, was averred to have bitten a 
fragment in his haste to drink; it being then high 
summer^ and little full-blooded boys feeling very warm 
and porous in the low-" studded " school-room where 
Dame Prentiss, dead and gone, ruled over young chil- 
dren, many of whom are old ghosts now, and have 
known Abraham for twenty or thirty years of our mor- 
tal time. 

Thirst belongs to humanity, ever3rwhere, in all ages ; 
but that white-pine pail, and that brown mug belong 
to me in particular ; and just so of my special relation 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 201 

ships with other things and with my race. One could 
never remember himself in eternity by the mere fact 
of having loved or hated any more than by that of 
having thirsted ; love and hate have no more individu- 
ality in them than single waves in the ocean ; — but 
the accidents or trivial marks which distinguished 
those whom we loved or hated make their memory 
our own forever, and with it that of our own person- 
ality also. 

Therefore, my aged friend of five-and-twenty, or 
thereabouts, pause at the threshold of this particular 
record, and ask yourself seriously whether you are fit 
to read such revelations as are to follow. For observe, 
you have here no splendid array of petals such as 
poets offer you, — nothing but a dry shell, containing, 
if you will get out what is in it, a few small seeds of 
poems. You may laugh at them, if you like. I shall 
never tell you what I think of you for so doing. But 
if you can read into the heart of these things, in the 
light of other memories as slight yet as dear to your 
soul, then you are neither more nor less than a Poet, 
and can afford to write no more verses during the rest 
of your natural life, — which abstinence I take to be 
one of the surest marks of your meriting the divine 
name I have just bestowed upon you. 

May I beg of you who have begun this paper nobly 
trusting to your own imagination and sensibilities to 
give it the significance which it does not lay claim to 
without your kind assistance, — may I beg of you, I 
say, to pay particular attention to the hrachets which 
inclose certain paragraphs ? I want my " asides," 
you see, to whisper loud to you who read my notes, 
and sometimes I talk a page or two to you without 
pretending that I said a word of it to our boarders. 



202 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

You will find a very long " aside " to you almost as 
soon as you begin to read. And so, dear young friend, 
fall to at once, taking such things as I have provided 
for you ; and if you turn them, by the aid of your pow- 
erful imagination, into a fair banquet, why, then, peace 
be with you, and a smnmer by the still waters of some 
quiet river, or by some yellow beach, where, as my 
friend, the Professor, says, you can sit with Nature's 
wrist in your hand and count her ocean pulses.] 

I should like to make a few intimate revelations re- 
lating especially to my early life, if I thought you 
would like to hear them. 

[The schoolmistress turned a little in her chair, and 
sat with her face directed partly toward me. — Half- 
mourning now ; — purple ribbon. That breastpin she 
wears has gray hair in it ; her mother's no doubt ; — 
I remember our landlady's daughter telling me, soon 
after the schoolmistress came to board with us, that 
she had lately " buried a payrent." That 's what made 
her look so pale, — kept the poor dying thing alive 
with her own blood. Ah ! long illness is the real 
vampyrism ; think of living a year or two after one is 
dead, by sucking the life-blood out of a frail young 
creature at one's bedside ! Well, souls gfow white, as 
well as cheeks, in these holy duties ; one that goes in 
a nurse may come out an angel. — God bless all good 
women ! — to their soft hands and pitying hearts we 
must all come at last ! — The schoolmistress has a bet- 
ter color than when she came. — Too late! — "It 
might have been." — Amen ! 

— How many thoughts go to a dozen heart-beats, 
sometimes ! There was no long pause after my remark 
addressed to the company, but in that time I had the 
train of ideas and feelings I have just given flash 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 203 

through my consciousness sudden and sharp as the 
crooked red streak that springs out of its black sheath 
like the creese of a Malay in his death-race, and 
stabs the earth right and left in its blind rage. 

I don't deny that there was a pang in it, — ^yes, a 
stab ; but there was a prayer, too, — the " Amen " be- 
longed to that. — Also, a vision of a four-story brick 
house, nicely furnished, — I actually saw many specific 
articles, — curtains, sofas, tables, and others, and could 
draw the patterns of them at this moment, — a brick 
house, I say, looking out on the water, with a fair 
parlor, and books and busts and pots of flowers and 
bird-cages, all complete ; and at the window, looking on 
the water, two of us. — " Male and female created He 
them " — These two were standing at the window, 
when a smaller shape that was playing near them 

looked up at me with such a look that I 

poured out a glass of water, drank it all down, and 
then continued.] 

I said I should like to tell you some things, such as 
people commonly never tell, about my early recollec- 
tions. Should you like to hear them ? 

Should we like to hear them ? — said the school- 
mistress ; — no, but we should love to. 

[The voice was a sweet one, naturally, and had 
something very pleasant in its tone, just then. — The 
four-story brick house, which had gone out like a 
transparency when the light behind it is quenched, 
glimmered again for a moment ; parlor, books, busts, 
flower-pots, bird-cages, all complete, — and the figures 
as before.] 

We are waiting with eagerness, Sir, — said the di- 
vinity-student. 

[The transparency went out as if a flash of black 
lightning had struck it.] 



204 THE AUTOCKAT OF THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 

If you want to hear my confessions, the next thing, 
— I said, — is to know whether I can trust you with 
them. It is only fair to say that there are a great 
many people in the world who laugh at such things. 
I think they are fools, but perhaps you don't all agree 
with me. 

Here are children of tender age talked to as if they 
were capable of understanding Calvin's " Institutes," 
and nobody has honesty or sense enough to tell the 
plain truth about the little wretches : that they are as 
superstitious as naked savages, and such miserable 
spiritual cowards — that is, if they have any imagina- 
tion — that they will believe anything which is taught 
them, and a great deal more which they teach them- 
selves. 

I was born and bred, as I have told you twenty 
times, among books and those who knew what was in 
books. I was carefully instructed in things temporal 
and spiritual. But up to a considerable maturity of 
childhood I believed Raphael and Michael Angelo to 
have been superhuman beings. The central doctrine 
of the prevalent religious faith of Christendom was 
utterly confused and neutralized in my mind for years 
by one of those too common stories of actual life, 
which I overheard repeated in a whisper. — Why did 
I not ask? you will say. — You don't remember the 
rosy pudency of sensitive children. The first in- 
stinctive movement of the little creatures is to make a 
cache^ and bury in it beliefs, doubts, dreams, hopes, 
and terrors. I am uncovering one of these caches. 
Do you think I was necessarily a greater fool and 
coward than another ? 

I was afraid of ships. Why, I could never telL 
The masts looked frightfully tall, — but they were not 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 205 

BO tall as the steeple of our old yellow meeting-house. 
At any rate I used to hide my eyes from the sloops 
and schooners that were wont to lie at the end of the 
bridge, and I confess that traces of this undefined 
terror lasted very long. — One other source of alarm 
had a still more fearful significance. There was a 
great wooden hand, — a glove-maker's sign, which 
used to swing and creak in the blast, as it hung from 
a pillar before a certain shop a mile or two outside of 
the city. Oh, the dreadful hand ! Always hanging 
there ready to catch up a little boy, who would come 
home to supper no more, nor yet to bed, — whose por- 
ringer would be laid away empty thenceforth, and his 
half-worn shoes v/ait until his small brother grew to 
fit them. 

As for all manner of superstitious observances, I 
used once to think I must have been peculiar in hav- 
ing such a list of them, but I now believe that half the 
children of the same age go through the same experi- 
ences. No Roman soothsayer ever had such a cata- 
logue of omens as I found in the Sibylline leaves of 
my childhood. That trick of throwing a stone at a 
tree and attaching some mighty issue to hitting or 
missing, which you will find mentioned in one or 
more biographies, I well remember. Stepping on or 
over certain particular things or spots, — Dr. John- 
son's especial weakness, — I got the habit of at a very 
early age. — I won't swear that I have not some ten- 
dency to these not wise practices even at this present 
date. [How many of you that read these notes can 
say the same thing 1] 

With these follies mingled sweet delusions, which 
I loved so well I would not outgrow them, even when 
it required a volimtary effort to put a momentary trust 



206 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

in them. Here is one which I cannot help telling 
you. 

The firing of the great guns at the Navy-yard is 
easily heard at the place where I was born and lived. 
" There is a ship of war come in," they used to say, 
when they heard them. Of course, I supposed that 
such vessels came in imexpectedly, after indefinite 
years of absence, — suddenly as falling stones ; and 
that the great guns roared in their astonishment and 
delight at the sight of the old war-ship spUtting the 
bay with her cutwater. Now, the sloop-of-war the 
Wasp, Captain Blakely, after gloriously capturing the 
Reindeer and the Avon, had disappeared from the face 
of the ocean, and was supposed to be lost. But there 
was no proof of it, and, of course, for a time, hopes 
were entertained that she might be heard from. Long 
after the last real chance had utterly vanished, I 
pleased myself with the fond illusion that somewhere 
on the waste of waters she was still floating, and there 
were years during which I never heard the sound of the 
great gun booming inland from the Navy-yard with- 
ous saying to myself, " The Wasp has come ! " and al- 
most thinking I could see her, as she rolled in, crump- 
ling the water before her, weather-beaten, barnacled, 
with shattered spars and threadbare canvas, welcomed 
by the shouts and tears of thousands. This was one 
of those dreams that I nursed and never told. Let me 
make a clean breast of it now, and say, that, so late as 
to have outgrown childhood, perhaps to have got far 
on towards manhood, when the roar of the cannon 
has struck suddenly on my ear, I have started with a 
thrill of vague expectation and tremulous delight, and 
the long-unspoken words have articulated themselves 
in the mind's dumb whisper, Tke Wasp has come / 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 207 

— Yes, children believe plenty of queer things. I 
suppose all of you have had the pocket-book fever 
when you were little? — What do I mean? Why, 
ripping up old pocket-books in the firm belief that 
bank-bills to an immense amount were hidden in them. 
— So, too, you must all remember some splendid un- 
fulfilled promise of somebody or other, which fed you 
with hopes perhaps for years, and which left a blank 
in your life which nothing has ever filled up. — O. T. 
quitted our household carrying with him the passionate 
regrets of the more youthful members. He was an in- 
genious youngster ; wrote wonderful copies, and carved 
the two initials given above with great skill on all 
available surfaces. I thought, by the way, they were 
all gone ; but the other day I found them on a certain 
door which I will show you some time. How it sur- 
prised me to find them so near the ground! I had 
thought the boy of no trivial dimensions. Well, O. T., 
when he went, made a solemn promise to two of us. I 
was to have a ship, and the other a mar^^7^-house (last 
syllable pronounced as in the word tin?). Neither ever 
came ; but, oh, how many and many a time I have 
stolen to the corner, — the cars pass close by it at this 
time, — and looked up that long avenue, thinking that 
he must be coming now, almost sure, as I turned to 
look northward, that there he would be, trudging to- 
ward me, the ship in one hand and the mar^iw-house 
in the other ! 

[You must not suppose that all I am going to say, 
as well as all I have said, was told to the whole com- 
pany. The young fellow whom they call John was in 
the yard, sitting on a barrel and smoking a cheroot, 
the fumes of which came in, not ungrateful, through 
the open window. The divinity-student disappeared 



208 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

in the midst of our talk. The poor relation in black 
bombazine, who looked and moved as if all her articu- 
lations were elbow-joints, had gone off to her chamber, 
after waiting with a look of soul-subduing decorum at 
the foot of the stairs until one of the male sort had 
passed her and ascended into the upper regions. Tliis 
is a famous point of etiquette in our boarding-house ; 
in fact, between ourselves, they make such an awful 
fuss about it, that I, for one, had a great deal rather 
have them simple enough not to think of such matters 
at all. Our landlady's daughter said, the other even- 
ing, that she was going to " retire " ; whereupon the 
yoimg fellow called John took up a lamp and insisted 
on lighting her to the foot of the staircase. Notliing 
would induce her to pass by him, until the school- 
mistress, saying in good plain English that it was her 
bed-time, walked straight by them both, not seeming 
to trouble herself about either of them. 

I have been led away from what I meant the por- 
tion included in these brackets to inform my readers 
about. I say, then, most of the boarders had left the 
table about the time when I began telling some of 
these secrets of mine, — all of them, in fact, but the 
old gentleman opposite and the schoolmistress. I un- 
derstand why a young woman should like to hear these 
simple but genuine experiences of early life, which are, 
as I have said, the little brown seeds of what may yet 
grow to be poems with leaves of azure and gold ; but 
when the old gentleman pushed up his chair nearer to 
me, and slanted round his best ear, and once, when I 
was speaking of some trifling, tender reminiscence, 
drew a long breath, with such a tremor in it that a 
little more and it would have been a sob, why, then I 
felt there must be something of nature in them which 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 209 

redeemed their seeming insignificance. Tell me, man 
or woman with whom I am whispering, have you not 
a small store of recollections, such as these I am un- 
covering, buried beneath the dead leaves of many sum- 
mers, perhaps under the unmelting snows of fast re- 
turning winters, — a few such recollections, which, if 
you should write them all out, would be swept into 
some careless editor's drawer, and might cost a scanty 
half hour's lazy reading to his subscribers, — and yet, 
if Death should cheat you out of them, you would not 
know yourseK in eternity ?] 

— I made three acquaintances at a very early period 
of life, my introduction to whom was never forgotten. 
The first unequivocal act of wrong that has left its 
trace in my memory was this : refusing a small favor 
asked of me, — nothing more than telling what had 
happened at school one morning. No matter who 
asked it ; but there were circumstances which sad- 
dened and awed me. I had no heart to speak ; — I 
faltered some miserable, perhaps petulant excuse, stole 
away, and the first battle of life was lost. What re- 
morse followed I need not tell. Then and there, to 
the best of my knowledge, I first consciously took Sin 
by the hand and turned my back on Duty. Time has 
led me to look upon my offence more leniently ; I do 
not believe it or any other childish wrong is infinite, 
as some have pretended, but infinitely finite. Yet, oh 
if I had but won that battle ! 

The great Destroyer, whose awful shadow it was 
that had silenced me, came near me, — but never, so 
as to be distinctly seen and remembered, during my 
tender years. There flits dimly before me the image 
of a little girl, whose name even I have forgotten, a 
schoolmate, whom we missed one day, and were told 



210 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

that she had died. But what death was I never had 
any very distmct idea, until one day I climbed the low 
stone wall of the old burial-ground and mingled with 
a group that were looking into a very deep, long, nar- 
row hole, dug down through the green sod, down 
through the brown loam, down through the yellow 
gravel, and there at the bottom was an oblong red box, 
and a still, sharp, white face of a young man seen 
through an opening at one end of it. When the lid 
\fas closed, and the gravel and stones rattled down 
pell-mell, and the woman in black, who was crying and 
wringing her hands, went oif with the other mourn- 
ers, and left him, then I felt that I had seen Death, 
and should never forget him. 

One other acquaintance I made at an earlier period 
of life than the habit of romancers authorizes. — 
Love, of course. — She was a famous beauty after- 
wards. — I am satisfied that many children rehearse 
their parts in the drama of life before they have shed 
all their milk-teeth. — I think I won't tell the story 
of the golden blonde. — I suppose everybody has had 
his childish fancies ; but sometimes they are passionate 
impulses, which anticipate all the tremulous emotions 
belonging to a later period. Most children remember 
seeing and adoring an angel before they were a dozen 
years old. 

[The old gentleman had left his chair opposite and 
taken a seat by the schoolmistress and myself, a little 
way from the table. — It 's true, it 's true, — said the 
old gentleman. — He took hold of a steel watch-chain, 
which carried a large, square gold key at one end and 
was supposed to have some kind of time-keeper at the 
other. With some trouble he dragged up an ancient- 
looking, thick, silver, bull's-eye watch. He looked at it 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 211 

for a moment, — hesitated, — touched the inner corner 
of his right eye with the pulp of his middle finger, — 
looked at the face of the watch, — said it was getting 
into the forenoon, — then opened the watch and handed 
me the loose outside case without a word. — The 
watch-paper had been pink once, and had a faint tinge 
still, as if all its tender life had not yet quite faded 
out. Two little birds, a flower, and, in small school- 
girl letters, a date, — 17 . . — no matter. — Before 
I was thirteen years old, — said the old gentleman. — 
I don't know what was in that young schoolmistress's 
head, nor why she should have done it ; but she took 
out the watch-paper and put it softly to her lips, as if 
she were kissing the poor thing that made it so long 
ago. The old gentleman took the watch-paper care- 
fully from her, replaced it, turned away and walked 
out, holding the watch in his hand. I saw him pass 
the window a moment after with that foolish white hat 
on his head ; he could n't have been thinking what he 
was about when he put it on. So the schoolmistress 
and I were left alone. I drew my chair a shade 
nearer to her, and continued.] 

And since I am talking of early recollections, I don't 
know why I should n't mention some others that still 
cling to me, — not that you will attach any very par- 
ticular meaning to these same images so full of signif- 
icance to me, but that you will find something par- 
allel to them in your own memory. You remember, 
perhaps, what I said one day about smells. There 
were certain sounds also which had a mysterious sug- 
gestiveness to me, — not so intense, perhaps, as that 
connected with the other sense, but yet peculiar, and 
never to be forgotten. 

The first was the creaking of the wood-sleds, bring- 



212 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

ing their loads of oak and walnut from tlie country, as 
the slow-swinging oxen trailed them along over the 
complaining snow, in the cold, brown light of early 
morning. Lying in bed and listening to their dreary 
music had a pleasure in it akin to the Lucretian lux- 
ury, or that which Byron speaks of as to be enjoyed 
in looking on at a battle by one " who hath no friend, 
no brother there." 

There was another sound, in itself so sweet, and so 
connected with one of those simple and curious super- 
stitions of childhood of which I have spoken, that I 
can never cease to cherish a sad sort of love for it. — 
Let me tell the superstitious fancy first. The Puritan 
" Sabbath," as everybody knows, began at " sundown " 
on Saturday evening. To such observance of it I was 
born and bred. As the large, round disk of day de- 
clined, a stillness, a solemnity, a somewhat melancholy 
hush came over us all. It was time for work to cease, 
and for playthings to be put away. The world of ac- 
tive life passed into the shadow of an eclipse, not to 
emerge until the sun should sink again beneath the 
horizon. 

It was in this stillness of the world without and of 
the soul within that the pulsating lullaby of the even- 
ing crickets used to make itself most distinctly heard, 
— so that I well remember I used to think that the 
purring of these little creatures, which mingled with 
the batrachian hymns from the neighboring swamp, 
was peculiar to Saturday eveniiigs. I don't know 
that anything could give a clearer idea of the quieting 
and subduing effect of the old habit of observance of 
what was considered holy time, than this strange, 
childish fancy. 

Yes, and there was stiU another sound which min- 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 213 

gled its solemn cadences with the waking and sleeping 
dreams of my boyhood. It was heard only at times, 
— a deep, muffled roar, which rose and fell, not loud, 
but vast, — a whistling boy woidd have drowned it for 
his next neighbor, but it must have been heard over 
the space of a hundred square miles, I used to won- 
der what this might be. Could it be the roar of the 
thousand wheels and the ten thousand footsteps jarring 
and trampling along the stones of the neighboring 
city ? That would be continuous ; but this, as I have 
said, rose and fell in regular rhythm. I remember 
being told, and I suppose this to have been the true 
solution, that it was the sound of the waves, after a 
high wind, breaking on the long beaches many miles 
distant. I should really like to know whether any 
observing people living ten miles, more or less, inland 
from long beaches, — in such a town, for instance, as 
Cantabridge, in the eastern part of the Territory of 
the Massachusetts, — have ever observed any such 
sound, and whether it was rightly accounted for as 
above. 

Mingling with these inarticulate sounds in the low 
murmur of memory, are the echoes of certain voices I 
have heard at rare intervals. I grieve to say it, but 
our people, I think, have not generally agreeable 
voices. The marrowy organisms, with skins that shed 
water like the backs of ducks, with smooth surfaces 
neatly padded beneath, and velvet linings to their 
singing-pipes, are not so common among us as that 
other pattern of humanity with angular outlines and 
plane surfaces, arid integuments, hair like the fibrous 
covering of a cocoa-nut in gloss and suppleness as well 
as color, and voices at once thin and strenuous; — 
a.cidulous enough to produce effervescence with alkalis, 



214 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

and stridulous ('1i()iil;]i to sliif; ducts witli the katydids. 
I tliiuk oiir conversational soprano, as soniotinics 
overheard in tlui cars, arising from a group of young 
persons, who niay 1kiv(^ taken tlu; train at one of our 
great in(histrial (Centres, for histance, — young persons 
of the female sex, we will say, who have bustled in, 
full-dressed, engaged in loud strident sjieeeh, and who, 
after free discussion, have lixed on two or more 
double seats, which having secured, they proceed to 
cat ap])les and hnnd round daguerreoty])es, — I say I 
think the (U)nversationMl soprano, heard under these 
circumstan(;es, would not be among the allurements 
the old Enemy would ynit in requisition, were he get- 
ting up a new temptation of St. Anthony. 

There are sweet voices among us, we all know, and 
voices not musical, it may be, to those who hear them 
for tlu^ first time, yet sweeter to us than any we shall 
hear until we listen to some warbling angel in the 
overture to that eternity of blissful harmonies we hope 
to enjoy. — Hut why should I tell lies? If my friends 
love me, it is because I try to tell the truth. I never 
heard but two voic^^s in my life that frightened me by 
their sweetness. 

— Frightened you? — said the schoolmistress. — 
Yes, frightencnl mv. They made me feel as if there 
might be constituted a creature with such a chord in 
her voice to some string in another's soul, that, if she 
but s})oke, he would leave all and follow her, though 
it were into the jaws of Erebus. Our only chance to 
keep our wits is, th;it there are so few natural chords 
between others' voices and this string in our souls, 
and that those which at first may have jarred a little 
by and by come into harmony with it. — But I tell 
you this is no iiction. You may call the story of 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 215 

Ulysses and the Sirens a fable, but what will you say 
to Mario and the poor lady who followcid lihn? 

— Whose W(3re those two voices tliat bewitched me 
so? — They both belonged to Gennan women. One 
was a chambermaid, not otlierwise fascinating. The 
key of my room at a certain great hotel was missing, 
and this Teutonic maiden was summoned to give in- 
formation respecting it. The simj)le soul was evi- 
dently not h)ng from her mother-land, and spoke with 
sv/eet uncertainty of dialect. But to liear her wonder 
and lament and suggest with soft, liquid inflexions, 
and low, sad murmurs, in tones as full of serious ten- 
derness for the fate of the lost key as if it had been a 
child that had strayed from its mother, was so win- 
ning, that, had her features and figure been as deli- 
cious as her accents, — if she had looked like the mar- 
ble Clytic, for instance, — why, all I (ran say is — 

[The s(4ioohnistress opened her eyes so wide, that I 
stopped short.] 

I was only going to say that T should have drowned 
myself. For Lake Erie was close })y, and it is so 
much better to accept asphyxia, which takes cmly 
three minutes by the watch, than a rnjUfdlianca^ that 
lasts fifty years to begin with, and then passes along 
down the line of descent (breaking out in all manner 
of boorish manifestations of feature and manner, 
which, if men were only as shoi-t-lived as horses, could 
be readily traced ba(;k through the scpiare-roots and 
the cube-roots of the family stem on which you have 
hung the armorial bearings of the De Champignons 
or the D(3 la Morues, until one came to beings that 
ate with knives and said " Haow?"), that no person 
of right feeling could have hesitated for a single mo- 
ment. 



216 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

The second of the ravishing voices I have heard 
was, as I have said, that of another German woman. 

— I suppose I shall ruin myself by saying that such 
a voice could not have come from any Americanized 
human being. 

— What was there in it ? — said the schoolmistress, 

— and, upon my word,- her tones were so very musical, 
that I almost wished I had said three voices instead of 
two, and not made the unpatriotic remark above re- 
ported. — Oh, I said, it had so much woman in it, — 
muliebrity^ as well as femineity ; — no self-assertion, 
such as free suffrage introduces into every word and 
movement; large, vigorous nature, running back to 
those huge-limbed Germans of Tacitus, but subdued 
by the reverential training and tuned by the kindly 
culture of fifty generations. Sharp business habits, a 
lean soil, independence, enterprise, and east winds, are 
not the best things for the larynx. Still, you hear 
noble voices among us, — I have known families fa- 
mous for them, — but ask the first person you meet a 
question, and ten to one there is a hard, sharp, metal- 
lic, matter-of-business clink in the accents of the an- 
swer, that produces the effect of one of those bells 
which small trades-people connect with their shop- 
doors, and which spring upon your ear with such vi- 
vacity, as you enter, that your first impulse is to retire 
at once from the precincts. 

— Ah, but I must not forget that dear little child I 
saw and heard in a French hospital. Between two 
and three years old. Fell out of her chair and snapped 
both thigh-bones. Lying in bed, patient, gentle. 
Rough students round her, some in white aprons, 
looking fearfully business-like ; but the child placid, 
perfectly still. I spoke to her, and the blessed little 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 217 

creature answered me in a voice of such heavenly- 
sweetness, with that reedy thrill in it which you have 
heard in the thrush's even-song, that I seem to hear it 
at this moment, while I am writing, so many, many 
years afterwards. — C^est tout comme un serin, said 
the French student at my side. 

These are the voices which struck the key-note of 
my conceptions as to what the sounds we are to hear in 
heaven will be, if we shall enter through one of the 
twelve gates of pearl. There must be other things 
besides aerolites that wander from their own spheres 
to ours ; and when we speak of celestial sweetness or 
beauty, we may be nearer the literal truth than we 
dream. If mankind generally are the shipwrecked 
survivors of some pre-Adamitic cataclysm, set adrift 
in these little open boats of humanity to make one 
more trial to reach the shore, — as some grave theolo- 
gians have maintained, — if, in plain English, men are 
the ghosts of dead devils who have " died into life " 
(to borrow an expression from Keats), and walk the 
earth in a suit of living rags which lasts three or four 
score summers, — why, there must have been a few 
good spirits sent to keep them company, and these 
sweet voices I speak of must belong to them. 

— I wish you could once hear my sister's voice, — 
said the schoolmistress. 

If it is like yours, it must be a pleasant one, — 
said I. 

I never thought mine was anything, — said the 
schoolmistress. 

How should you know ? — said I. — People never 
hear their own voices, — any more than they see their 
own faces. There is not even a looking-glass for the 
voice. Of course, there is something audible to us 



218 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

when we speak; but that something is not our own 
voice as it is known to all our acquaintances. I think, 
if an image spoke to us in our own tones, we should 
not know them in the least. — How pleasant it would 
be, if in another state of being we could have shapes 
like our former selves for playthings, — we standing 
outside or inside of them, as we liked, and they being 
to us just what we used to be to others ! 

— I wonder if there will be nothing like what we 
call " play," after our earthly toys are broken, — said 
the schoolmistress. 

Hush, — said I, — what will the divinity-student 
say? 

[I thought she was hit, that time ; — but the shot 
must have gone over her, or on one side of her ; she 
did not flinch.] 

Oh, — said the schoolmistress, — he must look out 
for my sister's heresies ; I am afraid he will be too 
busy with them to take care of mine. 

Do you mean to say, — said I, — that it is your sis* 
ter whom that student — 

[The young fellow commonly known as John, who 
had been sitting on the barrel, smoking, jumped off 
just then, kicked over the barrel, gave it a push with 
his foot that set it rolling, and stuck his saucy-looking 
face in at the window so as to cut my question off in 
the middle ; and the schoolmistress leaving the room 
a few minutes afterwards, I did not have a chance to 
finish it. 

The young fellow came in and sat down in a chair, 
putting his heels on the top of another. 

Pooty girl, — said he. 

A fine young lady, — I replied. 

Keeps a fust-rate school, according to accounts, — 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 219 

said he, — teaches all sorts of things, — Latin and 
Italian and music. Folks rich once, — smashed up. 
She went right ahead as smart as if she 'd been born 
to work. That 's the kind o' girl I go for. 1 'd marry 
her, only two or three other girls would drown them- 
selves, if I did. 

I think the above is the longest speech of this young 
fellow's which I have put on record. I do not like 
to change his peculiar expressions, for this is one of 
those cases in which the style is the man, as M. de 
Buffon says. The fact is, the young fellow is a good- 
hearted creature enough, only too fond of his jokes, 
— and if it were not for those heat-lightning winks 
on one side of his face, I should not mind his fun 
much.] 

[Some days after this, when the company were to- 
gether again, I talked a little.] 

— I don't think I have a genuine hatred for any- 
body. I am well aware that I differ herein from 
the sturdy English moralist and the stout American 
tragedian. I don't deny that I hate the sight of cer- 
tain people ; but the qualities which make me tend to 
hate the man himself are such as I am so much dis- 
posed to pity, that, except under immediate aggrava- 
tion, I feel kindly enough to the worst of them. It is 
such a sad thing to be born a sneaking fellow, so much 
worse than to inherit a hump-back or a couple of club- 
feet, that I sometimes feel as if we ought to love the 
crippled souls, if I may use this expression, with a cer- 
tain tenderness which we need not waste on noble 
natures. One who is born with such congenital inca- 
pacity that nothing can make a gentleman of him is 
entitled, not to our wrath, but to our profoundest 



220 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

sympathy. But as we cannot help hatmg the sight of 
these people, just as we do that of physical deformi- 
ties, we gradually eliminate them from our society, — 
we love them, but open the window and let them go. 
By the time decent people reach middle age they have 
weeded their circle pretty well of these unfortunates, 
unless they have a taste for such animals ; in which 
case, no matter what their position may be, there is 
something, you may be sure, in their natures akin to 
that of their wretched parasites. 

— The divinity-student wished to know what I 
thought of affinities, as well as of antipathies ; did I 
believe in love at first sight ? 

Sir, — said I, — all men love all women. That is 
the primd-facie aspect of the case. The Court of 
Nature assumes the law to be, that all men do so ; and 
the individual man is bound to show cause why he 
does not love any particidar woman. A man, says 
one of my old black-letter law-books, may show divers 
good reasons, as thus : He hath not seen the person 
named in the indictment ; she is of tender age, or the 
reverse of that ; she hath certain personal disqualifica- 
tions, — as, for instance, she is a blackamoor, or hath 
an ill-favored countenance ; or, his capacity of loving 
being limited, his affections are engrossed by a pre- 
vious comer ; and so of other conditions. Not the less 
is it true that he is bound by duty and inclined by 
nature to love each and every woman. Therefore it 
is that each woman virtually summons every man to 
show cause why he doth not love her. This is not by 
written document, or direct speech, for the most part, 
but by certain signs of silk, gold, and other materials, 
which say to all men, — Look on me and love, as in 
duty bound. Then the man pleadeth his special in- 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 221 

capacity, whatsoever that may be, — as, for instance, 
impecuniosity, or that he hath one or many wives in 
his household, or that he is of mean figure, or small 
capacity ; of which reasons it may be noted, that the 
first is, according to late decisions, of chiefest author- 
ity. — So far the old law-book. But there is a note 
from an older authority, saying that every woman doth 
also love each and every man, except there be some 
good reason to the contrary ; and a very observing 
friend of mine, a young unmarried clergyman, tells 
me, that, so far as his experience goes, he has reason 
to think the ancient author had fact to justify his 
statement. 

I '11 tell you how it is with the pictures of women 
we fall in love with at first sight. 

— We a'n't talking about pictures, — said the land- 
lady's daughter, — we 're talking about women. 

I understood that we were speaking of love at sight, 
— I remarked, mildly. — Now, as all a man knows 
about a woman whom he looks at is just what a picture 
as big as a copper, or a " nickel," rather, at the bottom 
of his eye can teach him, I think I am right in saying 
we are talking about the pictures of women. — Well, 
now, the reason why a man is not desperately in love 
with ten thousand women at once is just that which 
prevents all our portraits being distinctly seen upon 
that wall. They all are painted there by reflection 
from our faces, but because all of them are painted on 
each spot, and each on the same surface, and many 
other objects at the same time, no one is seen as a 
picture. But darken a chamber and let a single pencil 
of rays in through a key-hole, then you have a picture 
on the wall. We never fall in love with a woman in 
distinction from women, until we can get an image of 



222 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

her though a pin-hole ; and then we can see nothing 
else, and nobody but ourselves can see the image in 
our mental camera-obscura. 

— My friend, the Poet, tells me he has to leave 
town whenever the anniversaries come round. 

What 's the difficulty? — Why, they all want him 
to get up and make speeches, or songs, or toasts , 
which is just the very thing he does n't want to do. 
He is an old story, he says, and hates to show on these 
occasions. But they tease him, and coax him, and 
can't do without him, and feel all over his poor weak 
head until they get their fingers on the fontanelle 
(the Prof essor will tell you what this means, — he says 
the one at the top of the head always remains open in 
poets), until, by gentle pressure on that soft pulsating 
spot, they stupefy him to the point of acquiescence. 

There are tunes, though, he says, when it is a pleas- 
ure, before going to some agreeable meeting, to rush 
out into one's garden and clutch up a handful of what 
grows there, — weeds and violets together, — not cut- 
ting them off, but pulling them up by the roots with 
the brown earth they grow in sticking to them. That 's 
his idea of a post-prandial performance. Look here, 
now. These verses I am going to read you, he tells me, 
were pulled up by the roots just in that way, the other 
day. — Beautiful entertainment, — names there on 
the plates that flow from all English-speaking tongues 
as familiarly as and or tJie ; entertainers known when- 
ever good poetry and fair title-pages are held in es- ' 
teem ; guest a kind-hearted, modest, genial, hopeful 
poet, who sings to the hearts of his countrymen, the 
British people, the songs of good cheer which the 
better days to come, as all honest souls trust and be' 
lieve, will turn into the prose of common life. My 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 223 

friend, the Poet, says you must not read such a string 
of verses too literally. If he trimmed it nicely below, 
you would n't see the roots, he says, and he likes to 
keep them, and a little of the soil clinging to them. 

This is the farewell my friend, the Poet, read to his 
and our friend, the Poet : — 

A GOOD TIME GOING! 

Brave singer of the coming time, 

Sweet minstrel of the joyous present, 
Crowned with the noblest wreath of rhyme, 

The holly-leaf of Ayrshire's peasant, 
Good-bye! Good-bye! — Our hearts and hands, 

Our lips in honest Saxon phrases, 
Cry, God be with him, till he stands 

His feet among the English daisies! 

'T is here we part ; — for other eyes 

The busy deck, the fluttering streamer, 
The dripping arms that plunge and rise, 

The waves in foam, the ship in tremor, 
The kerchiefs waving from the pier, 

The cloudy pillar gliding o'er him, 
The deep blue desert, lone and drear. 

With heaven above and home before him! 

His home! — the Western giant smiles, 

And twirls the spotty globe to find it, — 
This little speck the British Isles ? 

'T is but a freckle, — never mind it! — 
He laughs, and all his prairies roll, 

Each gurgling cataract roars and chuckles, 
And ridges stretched from pole to pole 

Heave till they crack their iron knuckles. 

But Memory blushes at the sneer. 
And Honor turns with frown defiant, 

And Freedom, leaning on her spear, 

Lautrhs louder than the laughing giant: — 



224 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

*' An islet is a world," she said, 

*' When glory with its dust has blended, 
And Britain keeps her noble dead 

Till earth and seas and skies are rended! " 

Beneath each swinging forest-bough 

Some arm as stout in death reposes, — 
From wave-washed foot to heaven-kissed brow 

Her valor's life-blood runs in roses; 
Nay, let our brothers of the West 

Write smiling in their florid pages, 
One-half her soil has walked the rest 

In poets, heroes, martyrs, sages! 

Hugged in the cHnging billow's clasp, 

From sea- weed fringe to mountain heather, 
The British oak with rooted grasp 

Her slender handful holds together, — 
With cliffs of white and bowers of green, 

And Ocean narrowing to caress her, 
And hills and threaded streams between, — 

Our little mother isle, God bless her! 

In earth's broad temple where we stand, 

Fanned by the eastern gales that brought us, 
We hold the missal in our hand, 

Bright with the lines our Mother taught us; 
Where'er its blazoned page betrays 

The glistening links of gilded fetters, 
Behold, the half- turned leaf displays 

Her rubric stained in crimson letters! 

Enough ! To speed a parting friend 

'T is vain alike to speak and listen; — 
Yet stay, — these feeble accents blend 

With rays of light from eyes that glisten. 
Good-bye! once more, — and kindly tell 

In words of peace the young world's story, — 
And say, besides, — we love too well 

Our mothers' soil, our fathers' glory! 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 225 

When my friend, the Professor, found that my 
friend, the Poet, had been coming out in this fidl- 
blown style, he got a little excited, as you may have 
seen a canary, sometimes, when another strikes up. 
The Professor says he knows he can lecture, and 
thinks he can write verses. At any rate, he has often 
tried, and now he was determined to try again. So 
when some professional friends of his called him up, 
one day, after a feast of reason and a regular "freshet" 
of soul which had lasted two or three hours, he read 
them these verses. He introduced them with a few 
remarks, he told me, of which the only one he remem- 
bered was this : that he had rather write a single line 
which one among them should think worth remember- 
ing than set them all laughing with a string of epi- 
grams. It was all right, I don't doubt ; at any rate, 
that was his fancy then, and perhaps another time he 
may be obstinately hilarious ; however, it may be that 
he is growing graver, for time is a fact so long as 
clocks and watches continue to go, and a cat can't be 
a kitten always, as the old gentleman opposite said 
the other day. 

You must listen to this seriously, for I think the 
Professor was very much in earnest when he wrote it. 

THE TWO ARMIES." 

As Life's unending column pours, 
Two marshalled hosts are seen, — 

Two armies on the trampled shores 
That Death flows black between. 

One marches to the drum-beat's roll, 
The wide-mouthed clarion's bray, 

• This poem was written for and read at a meeting of the 
Massachusetts Medical Society. 



226 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 

And bears upon a crimson scroll, 
" Our glory is to slay." 

One moves in silence by the stream, 

With sad, yet watchful eyes, 
Calm as the patient planet's gleam 

That walks the clouded skies. 

Along its front no sabres shine, 

No blood-red pennons wave; 
Its banner bears the single line, 

'* Our duty is to save." 

For those no death-bed's lingering shade; 

At Honor's trumpet-call, 
With knitted brow and lifted blade 

In Glory's arms they fall. 

For these no clashing falchions bright. 

No stirring battle-cry; 
The bloodless stabber calls by night, — 

Each answers, *' Here am I! " 

For those the sculptor's laurelled bust, 

The builder's marble piles, 
The anthems pealing o'er their dust 

Through long cathedral aisles. 

For these the blossom-sprinkled turf 

That floods the lonely graves, 
When Spring rolls in her sea-green surf 

In flowery-foaming waves. 

Two paths lead upward from below, 

And angels wait above, 
W'ho count each burning life-drop's floWj, 

Each falling tear of love. 

Though from the Hero's bleeding breast 
Her pulses Freedom drew, 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 227 

Though the white lilies in her crest 
Sprang from that scarlet dew, — 

While Valor's haughty champions wait 

Till all their scars are shown, 
Love walks unchallenged through the gate. 

To sit beside the Throne ! 



X. ' 

[The schoolmistress came down with a rose in her 
hair, — a fresh June rose. She has been walking 
early; she has brought back two others, — one on 
each cheek. 

I told her so, in some such pretty phrase as I could 
muster for the occasion. Those two blush-roses I just 
spoke of turned into a couple of damasks. I suppose 
all this went through my mind, for this was what I 
went on to say : — ] 

I love the damask rose best of all. The flowers our 
mothers and sisters used to love and cherish, those 
which grow beneath our eaves and by our doorstep, 
are the ones we always love best. If the Houyhnhnms 
should ever catch me, and, finding me particularly vi- 
cious and unmanageable, send a man-tamer to Rareyfy 
me, I '11 tell you what drugs he would have to take 
and how he would have to use them. Imagine your- 
self reading a number of the Houyhnhnm Gazette, 
giving an account of such an experunent. 

" MAN-TAMING EXTRAORDINARY." 

" The soft-hoofed semi-quadruped recently captured 
was subjected to the art of our distinguished man- 
tamer in presence of a numerous assembly. The aui- 



228 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

mal was led in by two stout ponies, closely confined 
by straps to prevent liis sudden and dangerous tricks 
of shoulder-hitting and foot-striking. His counte- 
nance expressed the utmost degree of ferocity and cun« 
ning. 

" The operator took a handful of hudding lilac 
leaves^ and crushing them slightly between his hoofs, 
so as to bring out their peculiar fragrance, fastened 
them to the end of a long pole and held them towards 
the creature. Its expression changed in an instant, — 
it drew in their fragrance eagerly, and attempted to 
seize them with its soft split hoofs. Having thus qui- 
eted his suspicious subject, the operator proceeded to 
tie a hlue hyacinth to the end of the pole and held it 
out towards the wild animal. The effect was magical. 
Its eyes filled as if with raindrops, and its lips trem- 
bled as it pressed them to the flower. After this it 
was perfectly quiet, and brought a measure of corn to 
the man-tamer, without showing the least disposition 
to strike with the feet or hit from the shoulder." 

That will do for the Houyhnhnm Gazette. — Do 
you ever wonder why poets talk so much about flowers ? 
Did you ever hear of a poet who did not talk about 
them ? Don't you think a poem, which, for the sake 
of being original, should leave them out, would be like 
those verses where the letter a or e or some other is 
omitted ? No, — they will bloom over and over again 
in poems as in the summer fields, to the end of time, 
always old and always new. Why should we be more 
shy of repeating ourselves than the spring be tired of 
blossoms or the night of stars ? Look at Nature. She 
never wearies of saying over her floral pater-noster. 
In the crevices of Cyclopean walls, — in the dust where 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 229 

men lie, dust also, — on the mounds that bury huge 
cities, the wreck of Nineveh and the Bahel-heap, — 
still that same sweet prayer and benediction. The 
Amen ! of Nature is always a flower. 

Are you tired of my trivial personalities, — those 
splashes and streaks of sentiment, sometimes perhaps 
of sentimentality, which you may see when I show you 
my heart's corolla as if it were a tulip ? Pray, do not 
give yourself the trouble to fancy me an idiot whose 
conceit it is to treat himself as an exceptional being. 
It is because you are just like me that I talk and know 
that you will listen. We are all splashed and streaked 
with sentiments, — not with precisely the same tints, 
or in exactly the same patterns, but by the same hand 
and from the same palette. 

I don't believe any of you happen to have just the 
same passion for the blue hyacinth which I have, — 
very certainly not for the crushed lilac-leaf-buds ; 
many of you do not know how sweet they are. You 
love the smell of the sweet-fern and the bay-berry- 
leaves, I don't doubt ; but I hardly think that the last 
bewitches you with young memories as it does me. 
For the same reason I come back to damask roses, 
after having raised a good many of the rarer varieties. 
I like to go to operas and concerts, but there are queer 
little old homely sounds that are better than music to 
me. However, I suppose it 's foolish to tell such 
things. 

— It is pleasant to be foohsh at the right time, — 
said the divinity-student ; — saying it, however, in one 
of the dead languages, which I think are unpopular 
for summer-reading, and therefore do not bear quota- 
tion as such. 

Well, now, — said I, — suppose a good, clean, 



230 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

wholesome-looking countryman's cart stops opposite 
my door. — Do I want any huckleberries ? — If I do 
not, there are those that do. Thereupon my soft- 
voiced handmaid bears out a large tin pan, and then 
the wholesome countryman, heaping the peck-measure, 
spreads his broad hands around its lower arc to con- 
fine the wild and frisky berries, and so they run 
nimbly along the narrowmg channel until they tumble 
rustling down in a black cascade and tinkle on the re- 
sounding metal beneath. — I won't say that this rush- 
ing huckleberry hail-storm has not more music for me 
than the " Anvil Chorus." 

— I wonder how my great trees are coming on this 
summer. 

— Where are your great trees, Sir? — said the divin- 
ity-student. 

Oh, all round about New England. I call all trees 
mine that I have put my wedding-ring on, and I have 
as many tree-wives as Brigham Young has human ones. 

— One set 's as green as the other, — exclaimed a 
boarder, who has never been identified. 

They're all Bloomers, — said the young fellow 
called John. 

[I should have rebuked this trifling with language, 
if our landlady's daughter had not asked me just then 
what I meant by putting my wedding-ring on a tree.] 

Why, measuring it with my thirty-foot tape, my 
dear, — said I, — I have worn a tape almost out on 
the rough barks of our old New England elms and 
other big trees. — Don't you want to hear me talk 
trees a little now ? That is one of my specialties, 

[So they all agreed that they should like to hear me 
talk about trees.] 

I want you to understand, in the first place, that 1 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 231 

have a most intense, passionate fondness for trees in 
general, and have had several romantic attachments to 
certain trees in particular. Now, if you expect me to 
hold forth in a " scientific " way about my tree-loves, 

— to talk, for instance, of the Ulmus Americana, and 
describe the ciliated edges of its samara, and all that, 

— you are an anserine individual, and I must refer 

you to a dull friend who will discourse to you of such 

matters. What should you think of a lover who 

should describe the idol of his heart in the language 

of science, thus : Class, Mammalia ; Order, Primates ; 

Genus, Homo ; Species, Europeus ; Variety, Brown ; 

Individual, Ann Eliza ; Dental Formula, 

2 — 2 1 — 1 2 — 2 3—3 
I 2 2 ^ 1 1 P Q 9 ^ Q o , and so on ? 

No, my friends, I shall speak of trees as we see 
them, love them, adore them in the fields, where they 
are alive, holding their green sun-shades over our 
heads, talking to us with their hundred thousand 
whispering tongues, looking down on us with that 
sweet meekness which belongs to huge, but limited 
organisms, — which one sees in the brown eyes of 
oxen, but most in the patient posture, the outstretched 
arms, and the heavy-drooping robes of these vast be- 
ings endowed with life, but not with soul, — which 
outgrow us and outlive us, but stand helpless, — poor 
things ! — while Nature dresses and undresses them, 
like so many full-sized, but under-witted children. 

Did you ever read old Daddy Gilpin ? Slowest of 
men, even of English men; yet delicious in his slow- 
ness, as is the light of a sleepy eye in woman. I always 
supposed " Dr. Syntax " was written to make fun of 
him. I have a whole set of his works, and am very 
proud of it, with its gray paper, and open type, and 



232 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

long ff, and orange -juice landscapes. Pere Gilpin 
had the kind of science I like in the study of Nature, 
— a little less observation than White of Selborne, 
but a little more poetry. — Just think of applying the 
Linnaean system to an elm ! Who cares how manj^ 
stamens or pistils that little brown flower, which comes 
out before the leaf, may have to classify it by ? What 
we want is the meaning, the character, the expression 
of a tree, as a kind and as an individual. 

There is a mother-idea in each j)articular kind of 
tree, which, if well marked, is probably embodied in 
the poetry of every language. Take the oak, for in- 
stance, and we find it always standing as a type of 
strength and endurance. I wonder if you ever thought 
of the single -mark of supremacy which distinguishes 
this tree from those around it? The others shirk the 
work of resisting gravity ; the oak defies it. It chooses 
the horizontal direction for its limbs so that their 
whole weight may tell, — and then stretches them out 
fifty or sixty feet, so that the strain may be mighty 
enough to be worth resisting. You will find, that, in 
passing from the extreme downward droop of the 
branches of the weeping-willow to the extreme upward 
inclination of those of the poplar, they sweep nearly 
half a circle. At 90° the oak stops short ; to slant 
upward another degree would mark infirmity of pur- 
pose ; to bend downwards, weakness of organization. 
The American elm betrays something of both ; yet 
sometimes, as we shall see, puts on a certain resem- 
blance to its sturdier neighbor. 

It won't do to be exclusive in our taste about 
trees. There is hardly one of them which has not pe- 
culiar beauties in some fitting place for it. I remem- 
ber a tall poplar of monumental proportions and as* 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 233 

pect, a vast pillar of glossy green, placed on the sum- 
mit of a lofty hill, and a beacon to all the country 
round. A native of that region saw fit to build his 
house very near it, and, having a fancy that it might 
blow down some time or other, and exterminate him- 
self and any incidental relatives who might be " stop- 
ping " or " tarrying " with him, — also laboring under 
the delusion that human life is under all circumstances 
to be preferred to vegetable existence, — had the great 
poplar cut down. It is so easy to say, "It is only a 
poplar," and so much harder to replace its living cone 
than to build a granite obelisk ! 

I must tell you about some of my tree-wives. I was 
at one period of my life much devoted to the young 
lady-population of Rhode Island, a small but delight- 
ful State in the neighborhood of Pawtucket. The 
number of inhabitants being not very large, I had 
leisure, during my visits to the Providence Plantations, 
to inspect the face of the country in the intervals of 
more fascinating studies of physiognomy. I heard 
some talk of a great elm a short distance from the lo- 
cality just mentioned. " Let us see the great elm," 
— I said, and proceeded to find it, — knowing that it 
was on a certain farm in a place called Johnston, if 
I remember rightly. I shall never forget my ride and 
my introduction to the great Johnston elm. 

I always tremble for a celebrated tree when I ap- 
proach it for the first time. Provincialism has no 
8cale of excellence in man or vegetable ; it never 
knows a first-rate article of either kind when it has it, 
and is constantly taking second and third rate ones 
for Nature's best. I have often fancied the tree was 
afraid of me, and that a sort of shiver came over it as 
over a betrothed maiden when she first stands before 



234 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

the unknown to whom she has been plighted. Before 
the measuring tape the proudest tree of them all quails 
and shrinks into itself. All those stories of four or 
five men stretching their arms around it and not 
touching each other's fingers, of one's pacing the 
shadow at noon and making it so many hundred feet, 
die upon its leafy lips in the presence of the awfid rib- 
bon which has strangled so many false pretensions. 

As I rode along the pleasant way, watching eagerly 
for the object of my journey, the rounded tops of the 
elms rose from time to time at the road-side. Wher- 
ever one looked taller and fuller than the rest, I asked 
myself, — " Is this it? " But as I drew nearer, they 
grew smaller, — or it proved, perhaps, that two stand- 
ing in a line had looked like one, and so deceived me. 
At last, all at once, when I was not thinking of it, — 
I declare to you it makes my flesh creep when I think 
of it now, — all at once I saw a great green cloud 
swelling in the horizon, so vast, so symmetrical, of 
such Olympian majesty and imperial supremacy 
among the lesser forest-growths, that my heart stopped 
shoro, then jumped at my ribs as a hunter springs at a 
five-barred gate, and I felt all through me, without 
need of uttering the words, — " This is it ! " 

You will find this tree described, with many others, 
in the excellent Report upon the Trees and Shrubs of 
Massachusetts. The author has given my friend the 
Professor credit for some of his measurements, but 
measured this tree himself, carefully. It is a grand 
elm for size of trunk, spread of limbs, and muscular 
development, — one of the first, perhaps the first, of 
the first class of New England elms. 

The largest actual girth I have ever found at five 
feet from the ground is in the great elm lying a stone's 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 235 

fchrow or two north of the main road (if my points of 
compass are right) in Springfield. But this has much 
the appearance of having been formed by the union of 
two trunks growing side by side. 

The West-Springfield elm and one upon North- 
ampton meadows belong also to the first class of 
trees. 

There is a noble old wreck of an elm at Hatfield, 
which used to spread its claws out over a circumfer- 
ence of thirty-five feet or more before they covered 
the foot of its bole up with earth. This is the 
American elm most like an oak of any I have ever 
seen. 

The Sheffield elm is equally remarkable for size and 
perfection of form. I have seen nothing that comes 
near it in Berkshire County, and few to compare with 
it anywhere. I am not sure that I remember any 
other first-class elms in New England, but there may 
be many. 

— What makes a first-class elm ? — Why, size, in 
the first place, and chiefly. Anything over twenty 
feet of clear girth, five feet above the ground, and 
with a spread of branches a hundred feet across, may 
claim that title, according to my scale. All of them, 
with the questionable exception of the Springfield 
tree above referred to, stop, so far as my experience 
goes, at about twenty-two or twenty-three feet of 
girth and a hundred and twenty of spread. 

Elms of the second class, generally ranging from 
fourteen to eighteen feet, are comparatively common. 
The queen of them all is that glorious tree near one of 
the churches in Springfield. Beautiful and stately she 
is beyond all praise. The " great tree " on Boston 
common comes in the second rank, as does the one at 



236 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Cohasset, which used, to have, and probably has still, 
a head as round as an apple-tree, and that at Newbury- 
port, with scores of others which might be mentioned. 
These last two have perhaps been over-celebrated. 
Both, however, are pleasing vegetables. The poor old 
Pittsfield elm lives on its past reputation. A wig of 
false leaves is indispensable to make it presentable. 

[I don't doubt there may be some monster-elm or 
other, vegetating green, but inglorious, in some remote 
New England village, which only wants a sacred singer 
to make it celebrated. Send us your measurements? 
— (certified by the postmaster, to avoid possible im- 
position), — circumference five feet from soil, length 
of line from bough-end to bough-end, and we will see 
what can be done for you.] 

— I wish somebody would get us up the following 
work : — 

SYLVA NOVANGLICA. 

Photographs of New England Elms and other Trees, 
taken upon the Same Scale of Magnitude. With Let- 
ter-Press Descriptions, by a Distinguished Literary 
Gentleman. Boston & Co. 185 . . 

The same camera should be used, — so far as pos- 
sible, — at a fixed distance. Our friend, who has 
given us so many interesting figures in his " Trees of 
America," must not think this Prospectus invades his 
province ; a dozen portraits, with lively descriptions, 
would be a pretty complement to his large work, which, 
so far as published, I find excellent. If my plan were 
carried out, and another series of a dozen English 
trees photographed on the same scale, the comparison 
would be charming. 

It has always been a favorite idea of mine to bring 
the life of the Old and the New World face to face, 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 237 

by an accurate comparison of their various types of 
organization. We should begin with man, of course ; 
institute a large and exact comparison between the 
development of la pianta umana^ as Alfieri called it, 
in different sections of each country, in the different 
callings, at different ages, estimating height, weight, 
force by the dynamometer and the spirometer, and 
finishing off with a series of typical photographs, giv- 
ing the principal national physiognomies. Mr. Hutch- 
inson has given us some excellent English data to 
begin with. 

Then I would follow this up by contrasting the vari- 
ous parallel forms of life in the two continents. Our 
naturalists have often referred to this incidentally or 
expressly ; but the animus of Nature in the two half 
globes of the planet is so momentous a point of interest 
to our race, that it should be made a subject of ex- 
press and elaborate study. Go out with me into that 
walk which we call the Mall^ and look at the English 
and American elms. The American elm is tall, grace- 
ful, slender-sprayed, and drooping as if from languor. 
The English elm is compact, robust, holds its branches 
up, and carries its leaves for weeks longer than our 
own native tree. 

Is this typical of the creative force on the two sides 
of the ocean, or not ? Nothing but a careful compari- 
son through the whole realm of life can answer this 
question. 

There is a parallelism without identity in the animal 
and vegetable life of the two continents, which favors 
the task of comparison in an extraordinary manner. 
Just as we have two trees alike in many ways, yet not 
the same, both elms, yet easily distinguishable, just so 
we have a complete flora and a famia, which, parting 



238 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

from the same ideal, embody it with various modifica- 
tions. Inventive power is the only quality of which 
the Creative Intelligence seems to be economical ; just 
as with our largest human minds, that is the divinest 
of faculties, and the one that most exhausts the mind 
which exercises it. As the same patterns have very 
commonly been followed, we can see which is worked 
out in the largest spirit, and determine the exact lim- 
itations under which the Creator places the movement 
of life in all its manifestations in either locality. We 
should find ourselves in a very false position, if it 
shoidd prove that Anglo-Saxons can't live here, but 
die out, if not kept up by fresh supplies, as Dr. Knox 
and other more or less wise persons have maintained. 
It may turn out the other way, as I have heard one of 
our literary celebrities argue, — and though I took 
the other side, I liked his best, — that the American 
is the Englishman reinforced. 

— Will you walk out and look at those elms with 
me after breakfast ? — I said to the schoolmistress. 

[I am not going to tell lies about it, and say that 
she blushed, — as I suppose she ought to have done, 
at such a tremendous piece of gallantry as that was 
for our boarding-house. On the contrary, she turned 
a little pale, — but smiled brightly and said, — Yes, 
with pleasure, but she must walk towards her school, 
— She went for her bonnet. — The old gentleman op- 
posite followed her with his eyes, and said he wished 
he was a young fellow. Presently she came down, 
looking very pretty in her half -mourning bonnet, and 
carrying a school-book in her hand.] 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKPAST-TABLE. 239 
MY FIRST WALK WITH THE SCHOOLMISTRESS. 

This is the shortest way, — she said, as we came to 
a corner. — Then wc won't take it, — said I. — The 
schoolmistress laughed z little, and said she was ten 
minutes early, so she could go round. 

We walked under Mr. Paddock's row of English 
elms.** The gray squirrels were out looking for their 
breakfasts, and one of them came toward us in light, 
soft, intermittent leaps, until he was close to the rail 
of the burial-gromid. He was on a grave with a broad 
blue-slate-stone at its head, and a shrub growing on it. 
The stone said this was the grave of a young man who 
was the son of an Honorable gentleman, and who died 
a hundred years ago and more. — Oh, yes, died, — 
with a small triangular mark in one breast, and an- 
other smaller opposite, in his back, where another 
young man's rapier had slid through his body ; and so 
he lay down out there on the Common, and was 
found cold the next morning, with the night-dews and 
the death-dews mingled on his forehead. 

Let us have one look at poor Benjamin's grave, — 
said I. — His bones lie where his body was laid so 
long ago, and where the stone says they lie, — which 
is more than can be said of most of the tenants of this 
and several other burial-grounds. 

[The most accursed act of Vandalism ever com- 
mitted within my knowledge was the uprooting of the 
ancient gravestones in three at least of our city burial- 
grounds, and one at least just outside the city, and 
planting them in rows to suit the taste for symmetry 

« " Mr. Paddock's row of Eno;lish elms " has gone, but " Poor 
Benjamin " lies quietly under the same stone the schoolmistress 
saw throusih the iron rails. 



240 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

of the perpetrators. Many years ago, when this dis- 
graceful process was going on under my eyes, I ad- 
dressed an indignant remonstrance to a leading jour* 
nal. I suppose it was deficient in literary elegance, 
or too warm in its language ,• for no notice was taken 
of it, and the hyena-horror was allowed to complete it^ 
self in the face of daylight. I have never got over it. 
The bones of my own ancestors, being entombed, lie 
beneath their own tablet ; but the upright stones have 
been shuffled about like chessmen, and nothing short 
of the Day of Judgment will tell whose dust lies be- 
neath any of those records, meant by affection to mark 
one small spot as sacred to some cherished memory. 
Shame ! shame ! shame ! — that is all I can say. It 
was on public thorouglifares, under the eye of author- 
ity, that this infamy was enacted. The red Indians 
would hgive known better ; the selectmen of an Afri- 
can kraal-village would have had more respect for 
their ancestors. I should like to see the gravestones 
which have been disturbed all removed, and the 
ground levelled, leaving the flat tombstones ; epitaphs 
were never famous for truth, but the old reproach of 
" Here lies " never had such a wholesale illustration 
as in these outraged burial-places, where the stone 
does lie above and the bones do not lie beneath.] 

Stop before we turn away, and breathe a woman's 
sigh over poor Benjamin's dust. Love killed him, I 
think. Twenty years old, and out there fighting an- 
other young fellow on the Common, in the cool of that 
old July evening ; — yes, there must have been love at 
the bottom of it. 

The schoolmistress dropped a rosebud she had in 
her hand, through the rails, upon the grave of Benja- 
min Woodbridge. That was all her comment upon 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 241 

what I told her. — How women love Love ! said I ; — 
but she did not speak. 

We came opposite the head of a place or court run- 
ninof eastward from the main street. — Look down 
there, — I said, — My friend, the Professor, lived in 
that house at the left hand, next the further corner, 
for years and years. He died out of it, the other day. 
— Died ? — said the schoolmistress. — Certainly, — 
said I. — We die out of houses, just as we die out of 
our bodies. A commercial smash kills a hundred 
men's houses for them, as a railroad crash kills their 
mortal frames and drives out the immortal tenants. 
Men sicken of houses until at last they quit them, as 
the soul leaves its body when it is tired of its infirmi- 
ties. The body has been called "the house we live 
in " ; the house is quite as much the body we live in. 
Shall I tell you some things the Professor said the 
other day ? — Do ! — said the schoolmistress. 

A man's body, — said the Professor, — is whatever 
is occupied by his will and his sensibility. The small 
room down there, where I wrote those papers you re- 
member reading, was much more a portion of my body 
than a paralytic's senseless and motionless arm or leg 
is of his. 

The soul of a man has a series of concentric envel- 
opes round it, like the core of an onion, or the inner- 
most of a nest of boxes. First, he has his natural gar- 
ment of flesh and blood. Then, his artificial integu- 
ments, with their true skin of solid stuffs, their cuticle 
of lighter tissues, and their variously-tinted pigments. 
Thirdly, his domicile, be it a single chamber or a 
stately mansion. And then, the whole visible world, 
in which Time buttons him up as in a loose outside 
wrapper. 



242 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

You shall observe, — the Professor said, — for, like 
Mr. John Hunter and other great men, he brings in 
that shall with great effect sometimes, — you shall ob- 
serve that a man's clothing or series of envelopes does 
after a certain time mould itself upon his individual 
nature. We know this of our hats, and are always 
reminded of it when we happen to put them on wrong 
side foremost. We soon find that the beaver is a hol- 
low cast of the skull, with all its irregular bumps and 
depressions. Just so all that clothes a man, even to 
the blue sky which caps his head, — a little loosely, — 
shapes itself to fit each particular being beneath it. 
Farmers, sailors, astronomers, poets, lovers, condemned 
criminals, all find it different, according to the eyes 
with which they severally look. 

But our houses shape themselves palpably on our 
inner and outer natures. See a householder breaking 
up and you will be sure of it. There is a shell-fish 
which builds all manner of smaller shells into the 
walls of its own. A house is never a home until we 
have crusted it with the spoils of a hundred lives be- 
sides those of our own past. See what these are and 
you can tell what the occupant is. 

I had no idea, — said the Professor, — until I pulled 
up my domestic establishment the other day, what an 
enormous quantity of roots I had been making during 
the years I was planted there. Why, there was n't a 
nook or a corner that some fibre had not worked its 
way into ; and when I gave the last wrench, each of 
them seemed to shriek like a mandrake as it broke its 
hold and came away. 

There is nothing that happens, you know, which 
must not inevitably, and which does not actually, pho- 
tograph itself in every conceivable aspect and in all 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 243 

dimensions. The infinite galleries of the Past await 
but one brief process and all their pictures will be 
called out and fixed forever. We had a curious il- 
lustration of the great fact on a very humble scale. 
When a certain bookcase, long standing in one place, 
for which it was built, was removed, there was the ex= 
act image on the wall of the whole, and of many of its 
portions. But in the midst of this picture was another, 
— the precise outline of a map which had hung on the 
wall before the bookcase was built. We had all for- 
gotten everything about the map until we saw its pho- 
tograph on the wall. Then we remembered it, as some 
day or other we may remember a sin which has been 
built over and covered up, when this lower universe is 
pulled away from before the wall of Infinity, where 
the wrong-doing stands self-recorded. 

The Professor lived in that house a long time — 
not twenty years, but pretty near it. When he en- 
tered that door, two shadows glided over the thresh- 
old; five lingered in the doorway when he passed 
through it for the last time, — and one of the shadows 
was claimed by its owner to be longer than liis own. 
What changes he saw in that quiet place ! Death 
rained through every roof but his ; children came into 
life, grew to maturity, wedded, faded away, threw them- 
selves away ; the whole drama of life was played in 
that stock company's theatre of a dozen houses, one of 
which was his, and no deep sorrow or severe calamity 
ever entered his dwelling. Peace be to those walls, 
forever, — the Professor said, — for the many pleas- 
ant years he has passed within them ! 

The Professor has a friend, now living at a distance, 
who has been with him in many of his changes of 
place, and who follows him in imagination with tender 



244 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

interest wherever he goes. — In that little court, where 
he lived in gay loneliness so long, — 

— in his autumnal sojourn by the Connecticut, where 
it comes loitering down from its mountain fastnesses 
like a great lord, swallowing up the small proprietary 
rivulets very quietly as it goes, until it gets proud and 
swollen and wantons in huge luxurious oxbows about 
the fair Northampton meadows, and at last overflows 
the oldest inhabitant's memory in profligate freshets 
at Hartford and all along its lower shores, — up in 
that caravansary on the banks of the stream where 
Ledyard launched his log canoe, and the jovial old 
Colonel used to lead the Commencement processions, 
— where blue Ascutney looked down from the far dis- 
tance, and the hills of Beulah, as the Professor ahvays 
called them, rolled up the opposite horizon in soft 
climbing masses, so suggestive of the Pilgrim's Heav- 
enward Path . that he used to look through his old 
*' Dollond " to see if the Shining Ones were not within 
range of sight, — sweet visions, sweetest in those Sun- 
day walks which carried them by the peaceful Common, 
through the solemn village lying in cataleptic stillness 
under the shadow of the rod of Moses, to the terminus 
of their harmless stroll, — the patulous fage, in the 
Professor's classic dialect, — the spreading beech, in 
more familiar phrase, — [stop and breathe here a 
moment, for the sentence is not done yet, and we have 
another long journey before us,] — 

— and again once more up among those other hills 
that shut in the amber-flowing Housatonic, — ■ dark 
stream, but clear, like the lucid orbs that shine be- 
neath the lids of auburn - haired, sherry-wine-eyed 
demi-blondes, — in the home overlooking the winding- 
Stream and the smooth, flat meadow ; looked doYm 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 245 

upon by wild hills, where the tracks of bears and cata- 
mounts may yet sometimes be seen upon the winter 
snow ; facing the twin summits which rise in the far 
North, the highest waves of the great land-storm in 
all this billowy region, — suggestive to mad fancies 
of the breasts of a half-buried Titaness, stretched ou: 
by a stray thunderbolt, and hastily hidden away be 
neath the leaves of the forest, — in that home where 
seven blessed summers were passed, which stand in 
memory like the seven golden candlesticks in the be- 
atific vision of the holy dreamer, — 

— in that modest dwelling we were just looking at, 
not glorious, yet not unlovely in the youth of its drab 
and mahogany, — full of great and little boys' play- 
things from top to bottom, — in all these summer or 
winter nests he was always at home and always wel- 
come. 

This long articulated sigh of reminiscences, — this 
calenture which shows me the maple-shadowed plains 
of Berkshire and the mountain-circled green of Graf- 
ton beneath the salt waves which come feeling their 
way along the wall at my feet, restless and soft-touch- 
ing as blind men's busy fingers, — is for that friend of 
mine " who looks into the waters of the Patapsco and 
sees beneath them the same visions which paint them- 
selves for me in the green depths of the Charles. 

" " That friend of mine " was the late Joseph Roby, cnce a 
fellow-teacher with me in the Medical School of Dartmouth Col- 
lege, afterwards professor in the University of Maryland. He 
was a man of keen intellect and warm affections, but out of the 
range of his official duties seen of few and understood only by a 
very limited number of intimates. I used to refer to my wise 
friend so often, and he was so rarely visible, that some doubted 
if there was any such individual, or if he were not of the imper- 
sonal nature of Sairy Gamp's Mrs. Harris. I remember Emer- 
son was one of these smiling sceptics. 



246 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

— Did I talk all this off to the schoolmistress ? — 
Why, no, — of course not. I have been talking with 
you, the reader, for the last ten minutes. You don't 
think I should expect any woman to listen to such a 
sentence as that long one, without giving her a chance 
to put in a word ? 

— What did I say to the schoolmistress ? — Permit 
me one moment. I don't doubt your delicacy and 
good-breeding ; but in this particular case, as I was 
allowed the privilege of walking alone with a very 
interesting young woman, you must allow me to re- 
mark, in the classic version of a familiar phrase, used 
by our Master Benjamin Franklin, it is nullum tui 
negotii. 

When the schoolmistress and I reached the school- 
room door, the damask roses I spoke of were so much 
heightened in color by exercise that I felt sure it 
would be usefid to her to take a stroll like this every 
morning, and made up my mind I would ask her to 
let me join her again. 

EXTRACT FROM MY PRIVATE JOURNAL. 

{To he burned unread.) 

I am afraid I have been a fool ; for I have told as 
much of myself to this young person as if she were 
of that ripe and discreet age which invites confidence 
and expansive utterance. I have been low-spirited 
and listless, lately, — it is coffee, I think, — (I ob- 
serve that which is bought ready-ground never affects 
the head), — and I notice that I tell my secrets too 
easily when I am down-hearted. 

There are inscriptions on our hearts, which, like 
that on Dighton Kock, are never to be seen except 
at dead-low tide. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 247 

There is a woman's footstep on the sand at the side 
of my deepest ocean-buried inscription ! 

— Oh, no, no, no ! a thousand times, no ! — Yet 
what is this which has been shaping itself in my soul ? 

— Is it a thought? — is it a dream? — is it 2i passion? 

— Then I know what comes next. 

— The Asylum stands on a bright and breezy hill ; 
those glazed corridors are pleasant to walk in, in bad 
weather. But there are iron bars to all the windows. 
When it is fair, some of us can stroll outside that very 
high fence. But I never see much life in those 
groups I sometimes meet ; — and then the careful 
man watches them so closely ! How I remember 
that sad company I used to pass on fine mornings, 
when I was a schoolboy ! — B., with his arms full of 
yellow weeds, — ore from the gold mines which he 
discovered long before we heard of California, — Y., 
born to millions, crazed by too much plum-cake (the 
boys said), dogged, explosive, — made a Polyphemus 
of my weak-eyed schoolmaster, by a vicious flirt with 
a stick, — (the multi-millionnaires sent him a trifle, 
it was said, to buy another eye with ; but boys are 
jealous of rich folks, and I don't doubt the good 
people made him easy for life), — how I remember 
them all ! 

I recollect, as all do, the story of the Hall of Eblis, 
in " Vathek," and how each shape, as it lifted its 
hand from its breast, showed its heart, — a burning 
coal. The real Hall of Eblis stands on yonder sum- 
mit. Go there on the next visiting-day and ask that 
figure crouched in the corner, huddled up like those 
Indian mummies and skeletons found buried in the 
sitting posture, to lift its hand, — look upon its heart, 
and behold, not fire, but ashes. — No, I must not 



248 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

think of such an ending! Dying would be a much 
more gentlemanly way of meeting the difficulty. 
Make a will and leave her a house or two and some 
stocks, and other little financial conveniences, to take 
away her necessity for keeping school. — I wonder 
what nice young man's feet would be in my French 
slippers before six months were over! Well, what 
then ? If a man really loves a woman, of course he 
would n't marry her for the world, if he were not 
quite sure that he was the best j^erson she could by 
^any possibility marry. 

— It is odd enough to read over what I have 
just been writing. — It is the merest fancy that ever 
was in the world. I shall never be married. She 
will; and if she is as pleasant as she has been so 
far, I will give her a silver tea-set, and go and take 
tea with her and her husband, sometimes. No coffee, 
I hope, though, — it depresses me sadly. I feel very 
miserably ; — they must have been grinding it at 
home. — Another morning walk will be good for me, 
and I don't doubt the schoolmistress will be glad of 
a little fresh air before school. 

— The throbbing flushes of the poetical intermit- 
tent have been coming over me from time to time 
of late. Did you ever see that electrical experiment 
which consists in passing a flash through letters of 
gold leaf in a darkened room, whereupon some name 
or legend springs out of the darkness in characters of 
fire? 

There are songs all written out in my soul, which 
I could read, if the flash might pass through them, — 
but the fire must come down from heaven. Ah ! but 
what if the stormy 7iimhus of youthful passion has 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 249 

blown by, and one asks for lightning from the ragged 
cirrus of dissolving aspirations, or the silvered cumu- 
lus of sluggish satiety? I will call on her whom the 
dead poets believed in, whom living ones no longer 
worship, — the immortal maid, who, name her what 
you will, — Goddess, Muse, Spirit of Beauty, — sits 
by the pillow of every youthful poet and bends over 
his pale forehead until her tresses lie upon his cheek 
and rain their gold into his dreams. 

MUSA. 

O my lost Beauty ! — hast thou folded quite 

Thy wings of morning light 

Beyond those iron gates 
Where Life crowds hurrying to the haggard Fates, 
And Age upon his mound of ashes waits 

To chill our fiery dreams, 
Hot from the heart of youth plunged in his icy streams ? 

Leave me not fading in these weeds of care, 

Whose flowers are silvered hair ! — 

Have I not loved thee long, 
Though my young lips have often done thee wrong 
And vexed thy heaven-tuned ear with careless song ? 

Ah, wilt thou yet return, 
Bearino- thy rose-hued torch, and bid thine altar burn ? 

Come to me ! — I will flood thy silent shrine 

With my soul's sacred wine, 

And heap thy marble floors 
As the wild spice-trees waste their fragrant stores 
In leafy islands walled with madrepores 

And lapped in Orient seas, 
When all their feathery palms toss, plume- like, in the breeza 

Come to me! — thou shalt feed on honied words, 
Sweeter than song of birds; — 
No wailing bulbul's throat, 



250 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

No melting dulcimer's melodious note, 

When o'er the midnight wave its murmurs float, 

Thy ravished sense might soothe 
With flow so liquid-soft, with strain so velvet- smooth. 

Thou shalt be decked with jewels, like a queen, 

Sought in those bovvers of green 

Where loop the clustered vines 
And the close-clinging dulcamara twines, — 
Pure pearls of Maydew where the moonlight shines, 

And Summer's fruited gems. 
And coral pendants shorn from Autumn's berried stems- 
Sit by me drifting on the sleepy waves, — 

Or stretched by grass-grown graves. 

Whose gray, high-shouldered stones, 
Carved with old names Life's time-worn roll disowns, 
Lean, lichen-spotted, o'er the crumbled bones 

Still slumbering where they lay 
While the sad pilgrim watched to scare the wolf away. 

Spread o'er my couch thy visionary wing! 

Still let me dream and sing, — 

Dream of that winding shore 
Where scarlet cardinals bloom, — for me no more, — 
The stream with heaven beneath its liquid floor, 

And clustering nenuphars 
Sprinkling its mirrored blue like golden-chaliced stars! 

Come while their balms the linden-blossoms shed! — 

Come while the rose is red, — 

While blue-eyed Summer smiles 
On the green ripples round yon sunken piles 
Washed by the moon-wave warm from Indian isles, 

And on the sultry air 
The chestnuts spread their palms like holy men in prayer* 

Oh, for thy burning lips to fire my brain 
With thrills of wild sweet pain! — 
On life's autumnal blast, 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKF AST-TABLE. 251 

Like shrivelled leaves, youth's passion-flowers are cast, — 
Once loving thee, we love thee to the last ! — 

Behold thy new-decked shrine, 
And hear once more the voice that breathed ' ' Forever thine." 



XI. 

[The company looked a little flustered one morning 
when I came in, — so much so, that I inquired of my 
neighbor, the divinity-student, what had been going 
on. It appears that the young fellow whom they caU 
John had taken advantage of my being a little late (I 
having been rather longer than usual dressing that 
morning) to circulate several questions involving a 
quibble or play upon words, — in short, containing 
that indignity to the human understanding, condemned 
in the passages from the distinguished moralist of the 
last century and the illustrious historian of the pres- 
ent, which I cited on a former occasion, and known as 
a ljun. After breakfast, one of the boarders handed 
me a small roll of paper containing some of the 
questions and their answers. I subjoin two or three 
of them, to show what a tendency there is to frivolity 
and meaningless talk in young persons of a certain 
sort, when not restrained by the presence of more re- 
flective natures. — It was asked, " Why tertian and 
quartan fevers were like certain short-lived insects.'* 
Some interesting physiological relation would be nat- 
urally suggested. The inquirer blushes to find that 
the answer is in the paltry equivocation, that they skip 
a day or two. — " Why an EngKshman must go to the 
Continent to weaken his grog or punch." The an- 
swer proves to have no relation whatever to the tern- 



252 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

perance-movement, as no better reason is given than 
that island- (or, as it is absurdly written, He and} 
water won't mix. — But when I came to the next 
question and its answer, I felt that patience ceased to 
be a virtue. '^Why an onion is like a piano" is a 
query that a person of sensibility would be slow to 
propose.; but that in an educated community an in- 
dividual could be found to answer it in these words, — 
" Because it smell odious," quasi, it 's melodious, — is 
not credible, but too true. I can show you the paper. 

Dear reader, I beg your pardon for repeating such 
things. I know most conversations reported in books 
are altogether above such trivial details, but folly will 
come up at every table as surely as purslain and chick- 
weed and sorrel will come up in gardens. This young 
fellow ought to have talked philosophy, I know per- 
fectly well ; but he did n't, — he made jokes.] 

I am willing, — I said, — to exercise your ingenuity 
in a rational and contemplativ^e manner. — No, I do 
not proscribe certain forms of philosophical specula- 
tion which involve an approach to the absurd or the 
ludicrous, such as you may find, for example, in the 
folio of the Reverend Father Thomas Sanchez, in his 
famous Disputations, " De Sancto Matrimonio." I 
will therefore turn this levity of yours to profit by 
reading you a rhymed problem, wrought out by my 
friend the Professor. 

THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE: 
OR THE WONDERFUL " ONE-HOSS-SHAY." 

A LOGICAL STORY. 

Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss-shay, 
That was built in such a logical way 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

It ran a hundred years to a day, 
And then, of a sudden, it — ah, but stay, 
I '11 tell you what happened without delay, 
Scaring the parson into fits. 
Frightening people out of their wits, — 
Have you ever heard of that, I say ? 

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five, 
Georgius Secundus was then alive, — 
Snuffy old drone from the German hive; 
That was the year when Lisbon-town 
Saw the earth open and gulp her down. 
And Braddock's army was done so brown, 
Left without a scalp to its crown. 
It was on the terrible earthquake-day 
That the Deacon finished the one-hoss-shay. 

Now in building of chaises, I tell you what, 
There is always somewhere a weakest spot, — 
In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill, 
In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill. 
In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace, — lurking still, 
Find it somewhere you must and will, — 
Above or below, or within or without, — 
And that 's the reason, beyond a doubt, 
A chaise breaks down, but does n't wear out. 

But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do, 
With an " I dew vum," or an " I tell ?/eoM,") 
He would build one shay to beat the taown 
'n' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun' ; 
It should be so built that it couldn' break daown, 
— " Fur," said the Deacon, " 't 's mighty plain 
Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain; 
'n' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain, 

Is only jest 
T' make that place uz strong uz the rest." 

So the Deacon inquired of the village folk 
Where he could find the s-trongest oak, 



253 



254 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

That could n't be split nor bent nor broke, — 

That was for spokes and floor and sills; 

He sent for lance wood to make the thills; 

The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees, 

The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese, 

But lasts like iron for things like these; 

The hubs of logs from the " Settler's ellum," — 

Last of its timber, — they could n't sell 'em. 

Never an axe had seen their chips, 

And the wedges flew from between their lips, 

Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; 

Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, 

Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too. 

Steel of the finest, bright and blue; 

Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; 

Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide 

Found in the pit when the tanner died. 

That was the way he " put her through." — 

*' There! " said the Deacon, " naow she '11 dew." 

Do! I tell you, I rather guess 

She was a wonder, and nothing less! 

Colts grew horses, beards turned gray, 

Deacon and deaconess dropped away. 

Children and grand-children — where were they? 

But there stood the stout old one-hoss-shay 

As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day I 

Eighteen hundred; — it came and found 
The Deacon's Masterpiece strong and sound. 
Eighteen hundred increased by ten ; — 
*' Hahnsum kerridge " they called it then. 
Eighteen hundred and twenty came; — 
Running as usual ; much the same. 
Thirty and forty at last arrive, 
And then come fifty, and fifty-five. 

Little of all we value here 

Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year 

Without both feeling and looking queer. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 255 

In fact, there 's nothing that keeps its youth, 

So far as I know, but a tree and truth. 

(This is a moral that runs at large; 

Take it. — You 're welcome. — No extra charge.) 

First of November, — the Earthquake-day. — 

There are traces of age in the one-hoss-shay, 

A general flavor of mild decay, 

But nothing local, as one may say. 

There could n't be, — for the Deacon's art 

Had made it so like in every part 

That there was n't a chance for one to start. 

For the wheels were just as strong as the thills, 

And the floor was just as strong as the sills, 

And the panels just as strong as the floor, 

And the whippletree neither less nor more. 

And the back-crossbar as strong as the fore. 

And spring and axle and hub encore. 

And yet, as a tvhole, it is past a doubt 

In another hour it will be woni out! 

First of November, 'Fifty-five! 

This morning the parson takes a drive. 

Now, small boys, get out of the way! 

Here comes the wonderful one-hoss-shay, 

Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay. 

"Huddup! " said the parson. — Off went they„ 

The parson was working his Sunday's text,— 
Had got to ffthfy, and stopped perplexed 
At what the — Moses — was coming next. 
All at once the horse stood still, 
Close by the meet'n'-house on the hill. 

— First a shiver, and then a thrill. 
Then something decidedly like a spill, — 
And the parson was sitting upon a rock, 

At half-past nine by tlie meet'n'-house clock, — 
Just the hour of the Earthquake shock ! 

— What do you think the parson found, 
When he got up and stared around? 



256 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, 
As if it had been to the mill and ground. 
You see, of course, if you 're not a dunce, 
How it went to pieces all at once, — 
All at once, and nothing first, — 
Just as bubbles do when they burst. 

End of the wonderful one-hoss-shay. 
Logic is logic. That 's all I say. 

— I think there is one habit, — I said to our come 
pany a day or two afterwards, — worse than that of 
punning. It is the gradual substitution of cant or 
slang terms for words which truly characterize their 
objects. I have known several very genteel idiots 
whose whole vocabulary had deliquesced into some 
half dozen expressions. All things fell into one of 
two great categories, — fast or slow. Man's chief 
end was to be a hrich. When the great calamities of 
life overtook their friends, these last were spoken of 
as being a good deal cut up. Nine tenths of human 
existence were summed up in the single word, hore. 
These expressions come to be the algebraic symbols 
of minds which have grown too weak or indolent to 
discriminate. They are the blank checks of intel- 
lectual bankruptcy ; — you may fill them up with 
what idea you like ; it makes no difference, for there 
are no funds in the treasury upon which they are 
drawn. Colleges and good-for-nothing smoking-clubs 
are the places where these conversational fungi spring 
up most luxuriantly. Don't think I undervalue the 
proper use and application of a cant word or phrase. 
It adds piquancy to conversation, as a mushroom does 
to a sauce. But it is no better than a toadstool, odious 
to the sense and poisonous to the intellect, when it 
spawns itseK aU over the talk of men and youths 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 257 

capable of talking, as it sometimes does. As we hear 
slang phraseology, it is commonly the dish-water from 
the wasliings of English dandyism, schoolboy or full- 
grown, wrung out of a three-volume novel which had 
sopped it up, or decanted from the pictured urn of 
Mr. Verdant Green, and diluted to suit the provincial 
ch'mate. 

— The young fellow called John spoke up sharply 
and said, it was " rum " to hear me '' pitcliin' into 
fellers " for '^ goin' it in the slang line," when I used 
all the flash words myself just when I pleased. 

— I replied with my usual forbearance. — Cer- 
tainly, to give up the algebraic symbol because a or 
h is often a cover for ideal nihility, would be unwise. 
I have heard a child laboring to express a certain con- 
dition, involving a hitherto undescribed sensation (as 
it supposed), all of which could have been sufficiently 
explained by the participle — hored. I have seen a 
country-clergyman, with a one-story intellect and a 
one-horse vocabulary, who has consumed his valuable 
time (and mine) freely, in developing an opinion of a 
brother-minister's discourse which would have been 
abundantly characterized by a peach-down-lipped soph- 
vmore in the one word — sloic. Let us discriminate, 
and be shy of absolute proscription. I am omniver- 
bivorous by nature and training. Passing by such 
words as are poisonous, I can swallow most others, and 
chew such as I cannot swallow. 

Dandies are not good for much, but they are good 
for something. They invent or keep in circulation 
those conversational blank checks or counters just 
spoken of, which intellectual capitalists may some- 
times find it worth their while to borrow of them. 
They are useful, too, in keeping up the standard of 



258 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

dress, which, bat for them, would deteriorate, and be- 
come, what some old fools would have it, a matter of 
convenience, and not of taste and art. Yes, I like 
dandies well enough, — on one condition. 

— What is that, Sir ? — said the divinity-student. 

— That they have pluck. I find that lies at the 
bottom of all true dandyism. A little boy dressed up 
very fine, who puts his finger in his mouth and takes 
to crying, if other boys make fun of him, looks very 
silly. But if he turns red in the face and knotty in 
the fists, and makes an example of the biggest of his 
assailants, throwing off his fine Leghorn and his 
thickly-buttoned jacket, if necessary, to consummate 
the act of justice, his small toggery takes on the splen- 
dors of the crested helmet that frightened Astyanax. 
You remember that the Duke said his dandy officers 
were his best officers. The " Sunday blood," the su- 
per-superb sartorial equestrian of our annual Fast-day, 
is not imposing or dangerous. But such fellows as 
Brummel and D'Orsay and Byron are not to be 
snubbed quite so easily. Look out for "la main de fer 
sous le gant de velours" (which I printed in Eng- 
lish the other day without quotation-marks, thinking 
whether any scarabceus criticus would add this to his 
globe and roll in glory with it into the newspapers, — 
which he did n't do it, in the charming pleonasm of 
the London language, and therefore I claim the sole 
merit of exposing the same). A good many powerful 
and dangerous people have had a decided dash of 
dandyism about them. There was Alcibiades, the 
" curled son of Clinias " an accomplished young man, 
but what would be called a " swell " in these days. 
There was Aristoteles, a very distinguished writer, of 
whom you have heard, — a philosopher, in short, whom 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 259 

it took centuries to learn, centuries to unlearn, and 
is now going to take a generation or more to learn 
over again. Regular dandy he was. So was Marcus 
Antonius ; and though he lost his game, he played for 
big stakes, and it was n't his dandyism that spoiled 
his chance. Petrarca was not to be despised as a 
scholar or a poet, but he was one of the same sort. 
So was Sir Humphrey Davy ; so was Lord Palmers- 
ton, formerly, if I am not forgetful. Yes, — a dandy 
is good for something as such ; and dandies such as I 
was just speaking of have rocked this planet like a 
cradle, — aye, and left it swinging to this day. — 
Still, if I were you, I would n't go to the tailor's, on 
the streng-th of these remarks, and run up a long bill 
which will render pockets a superfluity in your next 
suit. Elegans " nascitur, non fit^ A man is born 
a dandy, as he is born a poet. There are heads that 
can't wear hats ; there are necks that can't fit cravats ; 
there are jaws that can't fill out collars — (Willis 
touched this last point in one of his earlier ambro- 
types, if I remember rightly) ; there are touriiures 
nothing can humanize, and movements nothing can sub- 
due to the gracious suavity or elegant languor or stately 
serenity which belong to different styles of dandyism. 
We are forming an aristocracy, as you may observe, 
in this comitry, — not a gratid-Dei^ nor ajure-divino 
one, — but a de-facto upper stratum of being, which 
floats over the turbid waves of common life like the ir> 
idescent film you may have seen spreading over the 
water about our wharves, — very splendid, though its 
origin may have been tar, tallow, train-oil, or other 
such imctuous commodities. I say, then, we are form- 
ing an aristocracy ; and, transitory as its individual 
life often is, it maintains itself tolerably, as a whole. 



260 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 

Of course money is its corner-stone. But now observe 
this. Money kept for two or three generations trans- 
forms a race, — I don't mean merely in manners and 
hereditary culture, but in blood and bone. Money 
buys air and sunshine, in which children grow up more 
kindly, of course, than in close, back streets ; it buys 
country places to give them happy and healthy sum- 
mers, good nursing, good doctoring, and the best cuts 
of beef and mutton. When the spring-chickens come 

to market I beg your pardon, — that is not what 

was I going to speak of. As the yoimg females of each 
successive season come on, the finest specimens among 
them, other things being equal, are apt to attract those 
who can afford the expensive luxury of beauty. The 
physical character of the next generation rises in con- 
sequence. It is plain that certain families have in this 
way acquired an elevated type of face and figure, and 
that in a small circle of city-connections one may some- 
times find models of both sexes which one of the rural 
counties would find it hard to match from all its town- 
ships put together. Because there is a good deal of run- 
ning down, of degeneration and waste of life, among 
the richer classes, you must not overlook the equally 
obvious fact I have just spoken of, — which in one or 
two generations more will be, I think, much more pa- 
tent than just now. 

The weak point in our chryso-aristocracy is the same 
I have alluded to in connection with cheap dandyism. 
Its thorough manhood, its high-caste gallantry, are not 
so manifest as the plate-glass of its windows and the 
more or less legitimate heraldry of its coach-panels. 
It is very curious to observe of how small account mil- 
itary folks are held among our Northern people. Our 
young men must gild their spurs, but they need not 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 261 

win them. The equal division of property keeps the 
younger sons of rich people above the necessity of 
military service. Thus the army loses an element of 
refinement, and the moneyed upper class forgets what 
it is to count heroism among its virtues. Still I don't 
believe in any aristocracy without pluck as its back- 
bone. Ours may show it when the time comes if it 
ever does come.** 

— These United States furnish the greatest market 
for intellectual green fruit of all the places in the 
world. I think so, at any rate. The demand for in- 
tellectual labor is so enormous and the market so far 
from nice, that young talent is apt to fare like un- 
ripe gooseberries, — get plucked to make a fool of. 
Think of a country which buys eighty thousand cop- 
ies of the " Proverbial Philosophy," while the author's 
admiring countrymen have been buying twelve thou- 
sand ! How can one let his fruit hang in the sun until 
it gets fully ripe, while there are eighty thousand such 
hungry mouths ready to swallow it and proclaim its 
praises ? Consequently, there never was such a collec- 
tion of crude pippins and haK-grown windfalls as our 
native literature displays among its fruits. There are 
literary green-groceries at every corner, which will buy 
anything, from a button-pear to a pine-apple. It takes 
a long apprenticeship to train a whole people to read- 
ing and writing. The temptation of money and fame 
is too great for young people. Do I not remember that 
glorious moment when the late Mr. we won't say 

* The marble tablets and memorial windows in our churches 
and monumental buildings bear evidence as to whether the 
young men of favored social position proved worthy of their 
privileges or not during the four years of trial which left us a 
nation. 



262 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

who, — editor of the we won't say what, offered 

me the sum of fifty cents 79 e^ double-columned quarto 
page for shaking my young boughs over his foolscap 
apron? Was it not an intoxicating vision of gold and 
glory ? I should doubtless have revelled in its wealth 
and splendor, but for learning that the fifty cents was 
to be considered a rhetorical embellishment, and by no 
means a literal expression of past fact or present in- 
tention. 

— Beware of making your moral staple consist of 
the negative virtues. It is good to abstain, and teach 
others to abstain, from all that is sinful or hurtful. 
But making a business of it leads to emaciation of 
character, unless one feeds largely also on the more 
nutritious diet of active sympathetic benevolence. 

— I don't believe one word of what you are saying, 
— spoke up the angular female in black bombazine. 

I am sorry you disbelieve it. Madam, — I said, and 
added softly to my next neighbor, — but you prove 
it. 

The young fellow sitting near me winked ; and the 
di\'inity-student said, in an undertone, — Oj)time dic- 
tum. 

Your talking Latin, — said I, — reminds me of an 
odd trick of one of my old tutors. He read so much 
of that language, that his English half turned into it. 
He got caught in to^vn, one hot summer, in pretty close 
quarters, and wrote, or began to write, a series of city 
pastorals. Eclogues he called them, and meant to 
have published them by subscription. I remember 
some of his verses, if you want to hear them. — You, 
Sir (addressing myself to the divinity-student), and 
all such as have been through college, or what is the 
same thing, received an honorary degree, will under- 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 263 

stand them without a dictionary. The old man had a 
great deal to say about " sestivation," as he called it, 
in opposition, as one might say, to hibernation. In- 
tramural aestivation, or town-life in summer, he would 
say, is a peculiar form of suspended existence, or semi- 
asphyxia. One wakes up from it about the beginning 
of the last week in September. This is what I re- 
member of his poem : — 

AESTIVATION. 

An Unpublished Poem, by my late Latin Tutor. 

In candentire the solar splendor flames; 
The foles, languescent, pend from arid rames; 
His humid front the cive, anheling, wipes, 
And dreams of erring on ventiferous ripes. 

How dulce to vive occult to mortal eyes. 
Dorm on the herb with none to supervise, 
Carp the suave berries from the crescent vine, 
And bibe the flow from longicaudate kine! 

To me, alas! no verdurous visions come, 
Save yon exiguous pool's conferva-scum, — 
No concave vast repeats the tendei- hue 
That laves my milk-jug with celestial blue! 

Me wretched! Let me curr to quercine shades I 
Effund your albid hausts, lactiferous maids! 
Oh, might I vole to some umbrageous clump, — 
Depart, — be off, — excede, — evade, — erump! 

— I have lived by the sea-shore and by the moun- 
tains. — No, I am not going to say which is best. 
The one where your place is is the best for you. Buo 
this difference there is: you can domesticate moun- 
tains, but the sea is ferm naturce. You may have a 
hut, or know the owner of one, on the mountain-side; 



264 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

you see a light half-way up its ascent in the evening, 
and you know there is a home, and you might share 
it. You have noted certain trees, perhaps ; you know 
the particular zone where the hemlocks look so black 
in October, when the maples and beeches have faded. 
All its reliefs and intaglios have electrotyped them- 
selves in the medallions that hang round the walls of 
your memory's chamber. — The sea remembers noth- 
ing. It is feline. It licks your feet, — its huge 
flanks purr very pleasantly for you ; but it will crack 
your bones and eat you, for all that, and wipe tlie 
crimsoned foam from its jaws as if nothing had hap- 
pened. The mountains give their lost children berries 
and water ; the sea mocks their thirst and lets them 
die. The mountains have a grand, stupid, lovable 
tranquillity ; the sea has a fascinating, treacherous in- 
telligence. The mountains lie about like huge rumi- 
nants, their broad backs awful to look upon, but safe 
to handle. The sea smooths its silver scales until you 
cannot see their joints, — but their shining is that of a 
snake's belly, after all. — In deeper suggestiveness I 
find as g^reat a difference. The mountains dwarf 
mankind and foreshorten the procession of its long 
generations. The sea drowns out humanity and time ; 
it has no sympathy with either ; for it belongs to eter- 
nity, and of that it sings its monotonous song forever 
and ever. 

Yet I should love to have a little box by the sea- 
shore. I should love to gaze out on the wild feline 
element from a front window of my own, just as I 
should love to look on a caged panther, and see it 
stretch its shining length, and then curl over and lap 
its smooth sides, and by-and-by begin to lash itself 
into rage and show its white teeth and spring at its 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 265 

bars, and howl the cry of its mad, but, to me, harm- 
less fury. — And then, — to look at it with that inward 
eye, — who does not love to shuffle off time and its 
concerns, at intervals, — to forget who is President 
and who is Governor, what race he belongs to, what 
language he speaks, which golden-headed nail of the 
firmament his particular planetary system is hung 
upon, and listen to the great liquid metronome as it 
beats its solemn measure, steadily swinging when 
the solo or duet of human life began, and to swing 
just as steadily after the human chorus has died out 
and man is a fossil on its shores ? 

— What should decide one, in choosing a summer 
residence? — Constitution, first of all. How much 
snow could you melt in an hour, if you were planted 
in a hogshead of it ? Comfort is essential to enjoy- 
ment. All sensitive people should remember that 
persons in easy circumstances suffer much more from 
cold in summer — that is, the warm half of the year 
— than in winter, or the other half. You must cut 
your climate to your constitution, as much as your 
clothing to your shape. After this, consult your taste 
and convenience. But if you would be happy in 
Berkshire, you must carry mountains in your brain ; 
and if you would enjoy Nahant, you must have an 
ocean in your soul. Nature plays at dominos with 
you ; you must match her piece, or she will never give 
it up to you. 

— The schoolmistress said, in a rather mischievous 
way, that she was afraid some minds or souls would 
be a little crowded, if they took in the Rocky Moun- 
tains or the Atlantic. 

Have you ever read the little book called "The 
Stars and the Earth?" — said I. — Have you seen 



266 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

the Declaration of Independence photographed in a 
surface that a fly's foot would cover ? The forms or 
conditions of Time and Space, as Kant will tell you, 
are nothing in themselves, — only our way of looking 
at things. You are right, I think, however, in recog- 
nizing the idea of Space as being quite as applicable 
to minds as to the outer world. Every man of reflec- 
tion is vaguely conscious of an imperfectly-defined 
circle which is drawn about his intellect. He has a 
perfectly clear sense that the fragments of his intel- 
lectual circle include the curves of many other minds 
of which he is cognizant. He often recognizes these 
as manifestly concentric with his own, but of less 
radius. On the other hand, when we find a portion 
of an arc on the outside of our own, v^e say it inter- 
sects ours, but are very slow to confess or to see that 
it circumscribes it. Every now and then a man's 
mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and 
never shrinks back to its former dimensions. After 
looking at the Alps, I felt that my mind had been 
stretched beyond the limits of elasticity, and fitted so 
loosely on my old ideas of space that I had to spread 
these to fit it. 

— If I thought I should ever see the Alps! — said 
the schoolmistress. 

Perhaps you will, some time or other, — I said. 

It is not very likely, — she answered. — I have had 
one or two opportunities, but I had rather be any- 
thing than governess in a rich family. 

[Proud, too, you little soft- voiced woman ! Well, 
I can't say I like you any the worse for it. How 
long will school-keeping take to kill you ? Is it pos- 
sible the poor thing works with her needle, too ? I 
don't like those marks on the side of her forefinger. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 267 

Tableau. Chamouni. Mont Blanc in full view. 
Figures in the foreground ; two of them standing 

apart; one of them a gentleman of oh, — ah, — 

yes ! the other a lady in a white cashmere, leaning 
on his shoulder. — The ingenuous reader will under- 
stand that this was an internal, private, personal, 
subjective diorama, seen for one instant on the back- 
ground of my own consciousness, and abolished into 
black nonentity by the first question which recalled 
me to actual life, as suddenly as if one of those iron 
shop-blinds (which I always pass at dusk with a 
shiver, expecting to stumble over some poor but hon- 
est shop-boy's head, just taken off by its sudden and 
unexpected descent, and left outside upon the side- 
walk) had come down in front of it "by the run."] 

— Should you like to hear what moderate wishes 
life brings one to at last? I used to be very am- 
bitious, — wasteful, extravagant, and luxurious in all 
my fancies. Kead too much in the "Arabian Nights." 
Must have the lamp, — could n't do without the ring. 
Exercise every morning on the brazen horse. Plump 
down into castles as full of little milk-white princesses 
as a nest is of young sparrows. All love me dearly at 
once. — Charming idea of life, but too high-colored for 
the reality. I have out-grown all this ; my tastes have 
become exceedingly primitive, — almost, perhaps, as- 
cetic. We carry happiness into our condition, but 
must not hope to find it there. I think you will be 
willing to hear some lines which embody the subdued 
and limited desires of my maturity. 



268 THE AUTOCHAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

CONTENTMENT. 

** Man wants but little here below." 

Little I ask ; my wants are few ; 

I only wish a hut of stone, 
(A verij plain brown stone will do,) 
That I may call my own ; — 
And close at hand is such a one, 
In yonder street that fronts the sun. 

Plain food is quite enough for me; 

Three courses are as good as ten ; — 
If Nature can subsist on three, 

Thank Heaven for three. Amen! 
I always thought cold victual nice; — 
My choice would be vanilla-ice. 

I care not much for gold or land; — 

Give me a mortgage here and there, — 
Some good bank-stock, — some note of hand 

Or trifling railroad share; — 
I only ask that Fortune send 
A little more than I shall spend. 

Honors are silly toys, I know, 

And titles are but empty names; — 
I would, perhaps, be Plenipo, — 

But only near St. James; — 
I 'm very sure I should not care 
To fill our Gubernator's chair. 

Jewels are baubles; 't is a sin 

To care for such unfruitful things; — 
One good-sized diamond in a pin, — 
Some, not so large, in rings, — 
A ruby and a pearl, or so. 
Will do for me ; — I laugh at show. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 269 

My dame should dress in cheap attire; 

(Good, heavy silks are never dear;) — 
I own perhaps I might desire 

Some shawls of true cashmere, — 
Some marrowy crapes of China silk, 
Like wrinkled skins on scalded milk. 

1 would not have the horse I drive 

So fast that folks must stop and stare: 
An easy gait — two, forty-five — 
Suits me ; I do not care ; — 
Perhaps, for just a single spurt ^ 
Some seconds less would do no hurt. 

Of pictures, I should like to own 

Titians and Raphaels three or four. — 
I love so much their style and tone, — 

One Turner, and no more, — 
(A landscape, — foreground golden dirt, — 
The sunshine painted with a squirt.) — 

Of books but few, — some fifty score 
For daily use, and bound for wear ; 
The rest upon an upper floor ; — 

Some little luxury there 
Of red morocco's glided gleam, 
And vellum rich as country cream. 

Busts, cameos, gems, — such things as these, 

Which others often show for pride, 
1 value for their power to please, 

And selfish churls deride ; — 
One Stradivarius, I confess, 
Two Meerschaums, I would fain possess. 

Wealth's wasteful tricks I will not learn, 

Nor ape the glittering upstart fool ; — 
Shall not carved tables serve my turn, 

But all must be of buhl ? 
Give grasping pomp its double share, — 
I ask but one recumbent chair. 



270 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Thus humble let me live and die, 

Nor long for Midas' golden touch, 
If Heaven more generous gifts deny, 
I shall not miss them much, — 
Too grateful for the blessing lent 
Of simple tastes and mind content! 

MY LAST WALK WITH THE SCHOOLMISTRESS. 
(-4 Parenthesis.) 

I can't say just how many walks she and I had 
taken together before this one. I foimd the effect of 
going out every morning was decidedly favorable on 
her health. Two pleasing dimples, the places for 
which were just marked when she came, played, 
shadowy, in her freshening cheeks when she smiled 
and nodded good-morning to me from the school- 
house-steps. 

I am afraid I did the greater part of the talking. 
At any rate, if I should try to report all that I said 
during the first liaK-dozen walks we took together, I 
fear that I might receive a gentle hint from my friends 
the publishers, that a separate volume, at my own risk 
and expense, would be the proj^er method of bringing 
them before the public. 

— I would have a woman as true as Death. At the 
first real lie which works from the heart outward, she 
should be tenderly chloroformed into a better world, 
where she can have an angel for a governess, and feed 
on strange fruits which will make her all over again, 
even to her bones and marrow. — Whether gifted with 
the accident of beauty or not, she should have been 
moulded in the rose-red clay of Love, before the 
breath of life made a moving mortal of her. Love- 
capacity is a congenital endov/ment; and I think, 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 271 

after a while, one gets to know the warm-hued na- 
tures it belongs to from the pretty pipe-clay counter- 
feits of them. — Proud she may be, in the sense of re- 
specting herself ; but pride, in the sense of contemning 
others less gifted than herself, deserves the two lowest 
circles of a vidgar woman's Inferno, where the punish^ 
ments are Smallpox and Bankruptcy. — She who nips 
off the end of a brittle courtesy, as one breaks the tip 
of an icicle, to bestow upon those whom she ought 
cordially and kindly to recognize, proclaims the fact 
that she comes not merely of low blood, but of bad 
blood. Consciousness of unquestioned position makes 
people gracious in j)roper measure to all ; but if a 
woman put on airs with her real equals, she has some- 
thing about herself or her family she is ashamed of, or 
ought to be. Middle, and more than middle-aged peo- 
ple, who know family histories, generally see through 
it. An official of standing was rude to me once. Oh, 
that is the maternal grandfather, — said a wise old 
friend to me, — he was a boor. — Better too few 
words, from the woman we love, than too many : while 
she is silent. Nature is working for her; while she 
talks, she is working for herself. — Love is sparingly 
soluble in the words of men ; therefore they speak 
nuich of it; but one syllable of woman's speech can 
dissolve more of it than a man's heart can hold. 

~ Whether I said any or all of these things to the 
schoolmistress, or not, — whether I stole them out of 
Lord Bacon, — whether I cribbed them from Balzac, 
— whether I dipped them from the ocean of Tupperian 
wisdom, — or whether I have just found them in my 
head, laid there by that solemn fowl. Experience 
(who, according to my observation, cackles oftener 
than she drops real live eggs), I cannot say. Wise 



272 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

men have said more foolish things, — and foolish men, 
I don't doubt, have said as wise things. Anyhow, the 
schoolmistress and I had pleasant walks and long 
talks, all of which I do not feel bound to report. 

— You are a stranger to me. Ma'am. — I don't 
doubt you would like to know all I said to the school- 
mistress. — I sha'n't do it ; — I had rather get the pub= 
iishers to return the money you have invested in these 
pages. Besides, I have forgotten a good deal of it. I 
shall tell only what I like of what I remember. 

— My idea was, in the first place, to search out the 
picturesque spots which the city affords a sight of, to 
those who have eyes. I know a good many, and it 
was a pleasure to look at them in company with my 
young friend. There were the shrubs and flowers in 
the Franklin-Place £ront-yards or borders : Commerce 
is just putting his granite foot upon them. Then there 
are certain small seraglio-gardens, into which one can 
get a peep through the crevices of high fences, — one 
in Myrtle Street, or at the back of it, — here and 
there one at the North and South ends. Then the 
great elms in Essex Street. Then the stately horse- 
chestnuts in that vacant lot in Chambers Street, which 
hold their outspread hands over your head (as I said 
in my poem the other day), and look as if they were 
whispering, " May grace, mercy, and peace be with 
you ! " — and the rest of that benediction. Nay, there 
are certain patches of ground, which, having lain neg- 
lected for a time. Nature, who always has her pockets 
full of seeds, and holes in all her pockets, has covered 
with hungry plebeian growths, which fight for life with 
each other, until some of them get broad-leaved and 
succulent, and you have a coarse vegetable tapestry 
which Kaphael would not have disdained to spread 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 273 

over the foreground of his masterpiece. The Professor 
pretends that he found such a one in Charles Street, 
which, in its dare-devil impudence of rough-and-tumble 
vegetation, beat the pretty-behaved flower-beds of the 
Public Garden as ignominiously as a group of young 
tatterdemalions playing pitch-and-toss beats a row of 
Sunday-school-boys with their teacher at their head. 

But then the Professor has one of his burrows in 
that region, and puts everything in high colors relat- 
ing to it. That is his way about everything. — I 
hold any man cheap, — he said, — of whom nothing 
stronger can be uttered than that all his geese are 
swans. — How is that. Professor ? — said I ; — I 
should have set you down for one of that sort. — Sir, 
— said he, — I am proud to say, that Nature has so 
far enriched me, that I cannot own so much as a duch 
without seeing in it as pretty a swan as ever swam the 
basin in the garden of the Luxembourg. And the 
Professor showed the whites of his eyes devoutly, like 
one returning thanks after a dinner of many courses. 

I don't know anything sweeter than this leaking in 
of Nature through all the cracks in the walls and 
floors of cities. You heap up a million tons of hewn 
rocks on a square mile or two of earth which was 
green once. The trees look down from the hill-sides 
and ask each other, as they stand on tiptoe, — " What 
are these people about ? " And the small herbs at 
their feet look up and whisper back, — " We will go 
and see." So the small herbs pack themselves up in 
the least possible bundles, and wait uiHil the wind 
steals to them at night and whispers, — " Come with 
me." Then they go softly with it into the great city, 
— - one to a cleft in the pavement, one to a spout on the 
roof, one to a seam in the marbles over a rich gentle- 



274 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

man's bones, and one to the grave without a stone 
where nothmg but a man is buried, — and there they 
grow, looking down on the generations of men from 
mouldy roofs, looking up from between the less-trod- 
den pavements, looking out through iron cemetery- 
railings. Listen to them, when there is only a light 
breath stirring, and you will hear them saying to each 
other, — " Wait awhile ! " The words run along the 
telegraph of those narrow green lines that border the 
roads leading from the city, until they reach the slope 
of the hills, and the trees repeat in low murmurs to 
each other, — " Wait awhile ! " By-and-by tlie flow 
of life in the streets ebbs, and the old leafy inhabit- 
ants — the smaller tribes always in front — saunter 
in, one by one, very careless seemingly, but very tena- 
cious, until they swarm so that the great stones gape 
from each other with the crowding of their roots, and 
the feldspar begins to be picked out of the granite to 
find them food. At last the trees take up their solemn 
line of march, and never rest until they have en- 
camped in the market-place. Wait long enough and 
you will find an old doting oak hugging a huge worn 
block in its yellow underground arms ; that was the 
corner-stone of the State-House. Oh, so patient she is, 
this imperturbable Nature ! 

— Let us cry ! — 

But all this has nothing to do with my walks and 
talks with the schoolmistress. I did not say that I 
would not tell you something about them. Let me 
alone, and J shall talk to you more than I ought to, 
probably. We never tell our secrets to people that 
pump for them. 

Books we talked about, and education. It was her 
duty to know something of these, and of course she 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 275 

did. Perhaps I was somewhat more learned than she, 
but I found that the difference between her reading* 
(and mine was like that of a man's and a woman's 
dusting a library. The man flaps about with a bunch 
of feathers ; the woman goes to work softly with a 
cloth. She does not raise half the dust, nor fill her 
oWn eyes and mouth with it, — but she goes into all 
the corners and attends to the leaves as much as to the 
covers^ — Books are the negative pictures of thought, 
and the more sensitive the mind that receives their 
images, the more nicely the finest lines are reproduced. 
A woman (of the right kind), reading after a man, 
follows him as Ruth followed the reapers of Boaz, and 
her gleanings are often the finest of the wheat. 

But it was in talking of Life that we came most 
nearly together. I thought I knew something about 
that, — that I could speak or write about it somewhat 
to the purpose. 

To take up this fluid earthly being of ours as a 
sponge sucks up water, — to be steeped and soaked in 
its realities as a hide fills its pores lying seven years 
in a tan-pit, — to have winnowed every wave of it as a 
mill-wheel works up the stream that runs through the 
flume upon its float-lx>ards, — to have curled up in the 
keenest spasms and flattened out in the laxest languors 
of this breathing-sickness, which keeps certain parcels 
of matter uneasy for three or four score years, — to 
have fought all the devils and clasped all the angels 
of its delirium, — and then, just at the point when the 
white-hot passions have cooled down to cherry-red, 
plunge our experience into the ice-cold stream of some 
human language or other, one might think would end 
in a rhapsody with something of spring and temper in 
it. All this I thought my power and province. 



276 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

The schoolmistress had tried life, too. Once in a 
while one meets with a single soul greater than all the 
living pageant which passes before it. As the pale 
astronomer sits in his study with sunken eyes and thin 
fingers, and weighs Uranus or Neptune as in a bal- 
ance, so there are meek, slight women who have 
weighed all which this planetary life can offer, and 
hold it like a bauble in the palm of their slender 
hands. This was one of them. Fortune had left her, 
sorrow had baptized her ; the routine of labor and the 
loneliness of ahnost friendless city-life were before 
her. Yet, as I looked upon her tranquil face, gradu- 
ally regaining a cheerfulness which was often sprightly, 
as she became interested in the various matters we 
talked about and places we visited, I saw that eye and 
lip and every shifting lineament were made for love, 
— unconscious of their sweet office as yet, and meet- 
ing the cold aspect of Duty with the natural graces 
which were meant for the reward of nothing less than 
the Great Passion. 

— I never addressed one word of love to the school- 
mistress in the course of these pleasant walks. It 
seemed to me that we talked of everything but love on 
that particular morning. There was, perhaps, a little 
more timidity and hesitancy on my part than I have 
commonly shown among our people at the boarding- 
house. In fact, I considered myself the master at the 
breakfast-table ; but, somehow, I could not command 
myself just then so well as usual. The truth is, I had 
secured a passage to Liverpool in the steamer which 
was to leave at noon, — with the condition, however, 
of beinof released in case circumstances occurred to 
detain me. The schoolmistress knew nothing about 
all this, of course, as yet. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 277 

It was on the Common that we were walking. The 
mall, or boulevard of our Common, you know, has va- 
rious branches leading from it in different directions. 
One of these runs down from opposite Joy Street 
southward across the whole length of the Common to 
Boylston Street. We called it the long path, and 
were fond of it. 

I felt very weak indeed (though of a tolerably 
robust habit) as we came opposite the head of this 
path on that morning. I think I tried to speak twice 
without making myself distinctly audible. At last I 
got out the question, — Will you take the long path 
with me ? — Certainly, — said the schoolmistress, — 
with much pleasure. — Think, — I said, — before you 
answer: if you take the long path with me now, I 
shall interpret it that we are to part no more ! — The 
schoolmistress stepped back with a sudden movement, 
as if an arrow had struck her. 

One of the long granite blocks used as seats was 
hard by, — the one you may still see close by the 
Gingko-tree. — Pray, sit down, — I said. — No, no, 
she answered, softly, — I will walk the long path with 
you! 

— The old gentleman who sits opposite met us 
walking, arm in arm, about the middle of the long 
path, and said, very charmingly, — " Grood-morning, 
my dears ! " 



XII. 

[I DID not think it probable that I should have a 
great many more talks with our company, and there- 
fore I was anxious to get as much as I could into 



2T8 THE AUTOCKAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

every conversation. That is the reason why you will 
find some odd, miscellaneous facts here, which I 
wished to tell at least once, as I should not have a 
chance to tell them habitually, at our breakfast-table. 

— We 're very free and easy, you know ; we don't 
read what we don't like. Our parish is so large, one 
can't pretend to preach to all the pews at once. One 
can't be all the time trying to do the best of one's 
best ; if a company works a steam fire-engine, the fire- 
men need n't be straining themselves all day to squirt 
over the top of the flagstaff. Let them wash some of 
those lower-story windows a little. Besides, there is 
no use in our quarrelling now, as you will find out 
when you get through this paper.] 

— Travel, according to my experience, does not ex- 
actly correspond to the idea one gets of it out of most 
books of travels. I am thinking of travel as it was 
when I made the Grand Tour, especially in Italy. 
Memory is a net; one finds it full of fish when he 
takes it from the brook ; but a dozen miles of water 
have run through it without sticking. I can prove 
some facts about travelling by a story or two. There 
are certain principles to be assumed, — such as these : 

— He who is carried by horses must deal with rogues. 

— To-day's dinner subtends a larger visual angle than 
yesterday's revolution. A mote in my eye is bigger 
to me than the biggest of Dr. Gould's private planets. 

— Every traveller is a self-taught entomologist. — 
Old jokes are dynamometers of mental tension; an 
old joke tells better among friends travelling than at 
home, — which shows that their minds are in a state 
of diminished, rather than increased, vitality. There 
was a story about " strahps to your pahnts," which 
was vastly funny to us fellows, — on the road from 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 279 

Milan to Venice. — Coelum^ non animum^ — travellers 
cha^nge their guineas, but not their characters. The 
bore is the same, eating dates under the cedars of 
Lebanon, as over a plate of baked beans in Beacon 
Street. — Parties of travellers have a morbid instinct 
for '^establishing raws" upon each other. — A man 
chall sit down with his friend at the foot of the Great 
Pyramid and they will take up the question they had 
been talking about under "the great elm," and forget 
all about Egypt. When I was crossing the Po, we 
were all fighting about the propriety of one fellow's 
telling another that his argument was absurd ; one 
maintaining it to be a perfectly admissible logical 
term, as proved by the phrase "reductio ad absur- 
dum ; " the rest badgering him as a conversational 
bully. Mighty little we troubled ourselves for Padiis^ 
the Po, "a river broader and more rapid than the 
Rhone," and the times when Hannibal led his grim 
Africans to its banks, and his elephants thrust their 
trunks into the yellow waters over which that pendu- 
lum ferry-boat was swinging back and forward every 
ten minutes ! 

— Here are some of those reminiscences, with mor- 
als prefixed, or annexed, or implied. 

Lively emotions very commonly do not strike us 
full in front, but obliquely from the side ; a scene or 
incident in undress often affects us more than one m 
full costume. 

"Is this tho, mighty ocean? — Is this all?" 

says the Princess in Gebir. The rush that should 
have flooded my soul in the Coliseum did not come. 
But walking one day in the fields about the city, I 
stumbled over a fragment of broken masonry, and lo 1 



280 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 

the World's Mistress in her stone girdle — alta mmnia 
Romce — rose before me and whitened my cheek with 
her pale shadow as never before or since. 

I used very often, when coming home from my 
morning's work at one of the public institutions of 
Paris, to stop in at the dear old church of St. Eti- 
enne du Mont. The tomb of St. Genevieve, sur- 
rounded by burning candles and votive tablets, was 
there ; the mural tablet of Jacobus Benignus Wins- 
low was there ; there was a noble organ with carved 
figures ; the pulpit was borne on the oaken shoulders 
of a stooping Samson ; and there was a marvellous 
staircase like a coil of lace. These things I mention 
from memory, but not all of them together impressed 
me so much as an inscrij^tion on a small slab of mar- 
ble fixed in one of the walls. It told how this church 
of St. Stephen was repaired and beautified in the 
year 16**, and how, during the celebration of its re- 
opening, two girls of the parish ( iilles de la paroisse) 
fell from the gallery, carrying a part of the balustrade 
with them, to the pavement, but by a miracle escaped 
uninjured. Two young girls nameless, but real pres- 
ences to my imagination, as much as when they came 
fluttering down on the tiles with a cry that outscreamed 
the sharpest treble in the Te Deum. (Look at Car- 
lyle's article on Boswell, and see how he speaks of the 
poor young woman Johnson talked with in the streets 
one evening.) All the crowd gone but these two 
*' filles de la paroisse," — gone as utterly as the dresses 
they wore, as the shoes that were on their feet, as the 
bread and meat that were in the market on that day. 

Not the great historical events, but the personal in- 
cidents which call up single sharp pictures of some hu- 
man being in its pang or struggle, reach . us most 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 281 

nearly. I remember the platform at Berne, over the 
parapet of which Theobald Weinzapfli's restive horse 
sprung with him and landed him more than a hun- 
dred feet beneath in the lower town, not dead, but 
sorely broken, and no longer a wild youth, but God's 
servant from that day forward. I have forgotten the 
famous bears, and all else. — I remember the Percy 
lion on the bridge over the little river at Alnwick, — 
the leaden lion with his tail stretched out straight like 
a pump-handle, — and why ? Because of the story of 
the village boy who must fain bestride the leaden tail, 
standing out over the water, — which breaking, he 
dropped into the stream far below, and was taken out 
an idiot for the rest of his life. 

Arrow-heads must be brought to a sharp point and 
the guillotine-axe must have a slantmg edge. Some- 
thing intensely human, narrow, and definite pierces to 
the seat of our sensibilities more readily than huge 
occurrences and catastrophes. A nail will pick a lock 
that defies hatchet and hammer. " The Royal George " 
went down with all her crew, and Cowper wrote an 
exquisitely simple poem about it ; but the leaf which 
holds it is smooth, while that which bears the lines on 
his mother's portrait is blistered with tears. 

My telling these recollections sets me thinking of 
others of the same kind which strike the imagination, 
especially when one is still young. You remember 
the monument in Devizes market to the woman struck 
dead with a lie in her mouth. I never saw that, but 
it is in the books. Here is one I never heard men- 
tioned ; — if any of the " Note and Query " tribe can 
tell the story, I hope they will. Where is this monu- 
ment ? I was riding on an English stage-coach when 
we passed a handsome marble column (as I remember 



282 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

it) of considerable size and pretensions. — What ia 
that ? — I said. — That, — answered the coachman, — 
is the hangman s inllar.'^ Then he told me how a 

" It would have been well if I had consulted Notes and 
Queries before telling this story. A year or two before the 
time when I was writing, a number of communications relating 
to the subject were sent to that periodical. A correspondent 
sailed my attention to them, and other correspondents, — Miss 
H. P., of London, the librarian of a public institution at Dub- 
hn, a young gentleman, writing from Cornwall, and others, 
whose residences I do not now remember, wrote to me, men- 
tioning stories like that which the coachman told me. The self- 
reproduction of the legend wherever there was a stone to hang 
it on, seems to me so interesting, as bearing on the philosophy 
of tradition, that I subjoin a number of instances from Note 
and Queries. 

In the first the thief's booty was a deer and not a sheep, as 
the common account made it. The incident not only involved 
a more distinguished quadruped, but also was found worthy of 
being commemorated in rhyme. 

N. # Q. for January 5, 1856. 

" In Potter's Churmcood, p. 179, a ' Legend of the Hangman's 
Stone,' in verse, is given, in which the death of John of Oxley 
is described. 

' One shaft he drew on his well-tried yew, 
And a gallant hart lay dead; 
He tied its legs, and he hoisted his prize, 
And he toiled over Lubcloud brow. 
He reached the tall stone, standing out and alone, 
Standing then as it standeth now; 
With his back to the stone he rested his load, 
And he chuckled with glee to think 
That the rest of his way on the down hill lay 
And his wife would have spiced the strong drink. 

A swineherd was passing o'er great Toe's Head, 

When he noticed a motionless man ; 

He shouted in vain — no reply could he gain — 

So down to the gray stone he ran. 

All was clear. There was Oxley on one side the stone, 

On the other the down-hanging deer; 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 283 

man went out one night, many years ago, to steal 
sheep. He caught one, tied its legs together, passed 
the rope over his head, and started for home. In 

The burden had slipped, and his neck it had nipped; 
He was hanged by his prize — all was clear.' 

*" When I was a youth,' the same writer continues, * there 
were two fields in the parish of Foremark, Derbyshire, called 
the Great and the Little Hangman's Stone. In the former 
there was a stone, five or six feet high, with an indentation 
runnino- across the top of it, and there was a legend that a 
sheep-stealer, once upon a time having stolen a sheep, had 
placed it on the top of the stone, and that it had slipped off and 
strangled him with the rope with which it was tied, and that 
the indentation was made by the friction of the rope caused by 
the struggles of the dying man.' — C. S. Greaves." 

N. 4- Q., April 5, 1856. 
Similar Legends at Diffkrkxt Places. — " At the end 
of Lamber Moor, on the roadside between Haverford West and 
Little Haven, in the County of Pembroke, there is a stone about 
four feet high, called ' Hang Davy Stone,' connected with which 
is a tradition of the accidental strangling of a sheep-stealer, sim- 
ilar to the legend mentioned by Mr. Greaves with reference to 
the stone at Foremark. — J. W. Phillips." 

N. <f Q., May 17, 1856. 
*' The Hangman Stone. — It may be interesting to your 
correspondent, Mr. J. W. Phillips, to be informed that at about 
five miles from Sidmouth, on the road to Colyton, on the right 
hand side of the road, and near Bovey House, is a large stone 
known by the name of ' Hangman Stone.' The legend is pre- 
cisely similar to that noticed by Mr. Phillips and by Mr, 
Greaves. — N. S. Heineker." 

N. tf Cl.,MayZA, 1856. 
** Hangman Stones. — Some years ago there was still to be 
seen, in a meadow belonging to me, situate near the northwest- 
ern boundary of the parish of Littlebury, in Essex, a large 
stone, the name of which, and the traditions attached to it, were 
identical with those recorded by your correspondents treating 



284 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

climbing a fence, the rope slipped, caught him by the 
neck, and strangled him. Next morning he was found 
hanging dead on one side of the fence and the sheep 
on the other ; in memory whereof the lord of the 
manor caused this monument to be erected as a warn- 
insT to all who love mutton better than virtue. I will 

o 

of Hangman Stones. This stone was subsequently removed by 
the late Mr. Jabez Gibson to Saffron Walden, and still remains 
in his garden at that place. I have a strong impression that 
other ' hangman stones ' are to be met with elsewhere, but I am 
unable to point out the exact localities. — Braybrooke." 

'' On the right side of the road between Brighton and New- 
haven (about five miles, I think, from the former place), is a 
stone designated as above, and respecting which is told the 
same legend as that which is quoted by Henry Kensington. — • 

H. E. C.'» 

N. 4- Q., June 21, 1856. 

" Hangman Stones. — At a picturesque angle in the road 
between Sheffield and Barnsley, and about three miles south of 
the latter place, there is a toll-bar called ' Hangman Stone Bar.' 
Attached to this title is the usual legend of a sheep-stealer being 
strangled by the kicking animal, which he had slung across his 
shoulders, and which pulled him backwards as he tried to climb 
over the stone wall inclosure with his spoil. I do not know that 
any particular stone is marked as the one on which the sheep 
was rested for the convenience of the thief in trying to make his 
escape, but the Jehu of the now extinct Barnsley mail always 
told this story to any inquiring passenger who happened to be 
one of five at top, — as quaint a four-in-hand as you shall see. 
— Alfred Gatty." 

I have little doubt that the story told by the "Jehu," which 
my memory may have embellished a little, as is not unusual 
with travellers' recollections, was the one to which I listened as 
one of the five outsides, and in answer to my question. The 
country boys used to insist upon it in my young days that stones 
grew. It seems to me probable that a very moderate monolith 
may have grown in my recollection to " a handsome marble col- 
umn," and that "the lord of the manor" was my own phrase 
rather than our coachman's. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 285 

send a copy of this record to him or her who shall first 
set me right about this colimin and its locality.'* 

And telling over these old stories reminds me that 
I have something which may interest architects and 
perhaps some other persons. I once ascended the 
spire of Strasburg Cathedral, which is the highest, I 
think (at present), in Europe. It is a shaft of stone 
filigree-work, frightfully open, so that the guide puts 
his arms behind you to keep you from falling. To 
climb it is a noonday nightmare, and to think of hav- 
ing climbed it crisps all the fifty-six joints of one's 
twenty digits. While I was on it, " pinnacled dim in 
the intense inane," a strong wind was blowing, and I 
felt sure that the spire was rocking. It swayed back 
and forward like a stalk of rye or a cat-o'-nine-tails 
(bulrush) with a bobolink on it. I mentioned it to 
the guide, and he said that the spire did really swing 
back and forward, — I think he said some feet. 

Keep any line of knowledge ten years and some 
other line will intersect it. Long afterwards I was 
hunting out a paper of Dumeril's in an old journal, — 
the " Magazin Encyclopedique " for Van troisieme 
(1795), when I stumbled upon a brief article on the 
vibrations of the spire of Strasburg Cathedral. A 
man can shake it so that the movement shall be shown 
in a vessel of water nearly seventy feet below the sum- 
mit, and higher up the vibration is like that of an 
earthquake. I have seen one of those wretched 
wooden spires with which we very shabbily finish 
some of our stone churches (thinking that the lidless 
blue eye of heaven cannot tell the counterfeit we try 
to pass on it,) swinging like a reed, in a wind, but one 
would hardly think of such a thing's happening in a 
" I sent two or throe copios to different correspondents. 



286 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

stone spire. Does the Bimker-Hill Monument bend in 
the blast like a blade of grass ? I suppose so. 

You see, of course, that I am talking in a cheap 
way ; — perhaps we will have some philosophy by and 
by ; — let me work out this thin mechanical vein. — ■ 
I have something more to say about trees. I have 
brought down this slice of hemlock to show you. Tree 
blew down in my woods (that were) in 1852. Twelve 
feet and a half round, fair girth ; — nine feet, where 
I got my section, higher up. This is a wedge, go- 
ing to the centre, of the general shape of a slice of 
apple-pie in a large and not opulent family. Length, 
about eighteen inches. I have studied the growth 
of this tree by its rings, and it is curious. Three 
hundred and forty-two rings. Started, therefore, 
about 1510. The thickness of the rings tells the 
rate at which it grew. For five or six years the rate 
was slow, — then rapid for twenty years. A little be- 
fore the year 1550 it began to grow very slowly, and 
so continued for about seventy years. In 1620 it took 
a new start and grew fast until 1714, then for the 
most part slowly until 1786, when it started again and 
grew pretty well and uniformly until within the last 
dozen years, when it seems to have got on sluggishly. 

Look here. Here are some human lives laid down 
against the periods of its growth, to which they cor- 
responded. This is Shakspeare's. The tree was seven 
inches in diameter when he was born ; ten inches 
when he died. A little less than ten inches when 
Milton was born ; seventeen when he died. Then 
comes a long interval, and this thread marks out 
Johnson's life, during which the tree increased from 
twenty-two to twenty-nine inches in diameter. Here 
is the span of Napoleon's career ; — the tree does n't 
seem to have minded it. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 287 

I never saw the man yet who was not startled at 
looking on this section. I have seen many wooden 
preachers, — never one like this. How much more 
striking would be the calendar counted on the rings 
of one of those awful trees which were standing when 
Christ was on earth, and where that brief mortal life 
is chronicled with the stolid apathy of vegetable be- 
ing, which remembers all human history as a thing of 
yesterday in its own dateless existence ! 

I have something more to say about elms. A rela- 
tive tells me there is one of great glory in Andover, 
near Bradford. I have some recollections of the former 
place, pleasant and other. [I wonder if the old Semi- 
nary clock strikes as slowly as it used to. My room- 
mate thought, when he first came, it was the bell toll- 
ing deaths, and people's ages, as they do in the coun- 
try. He swore — (ministers' sons get so familiar 
with good words that they are apt to handle them 
carelessly) — that the children were dying by the 
dozen, of all ages, from one to twelve, and ran off next 
day in recess, when it began to strike eleven, but was 
caught before the clock got through striking.] At 
the foot of " the hill," down in town, is, or was, a tidy 
old elm, which was said to have been hooped with iron 
to protect it from Indian tomahawks ( Credat Hahne- 
mannus)^ and to have grown round its hoops and 
buried them in its wood. Of course, this is not the 
tree my relative means. 

Also, I have a very pretty letter from Norwich, in 
Connecticut, telling me of two noble elms which are 
to be seen in the town. One hundred and twenty- 
seven feet from bough-end to bough-end. What do 
you say to that ? And gentle ladies beneath it, that 
love it and celebrate its praises ! And that in a town 



288 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

of such supreme, audacious, Alpine loveliness as Nor- 
wich ! — Only the dear people there must learn to call 
it Norridge, and not be misled by the mere accident 
of spelling. 

Norz/^icA. 

PorcAmouth. 

Cincinnata^. 
What a sad picture of our civilization ! 

I did not speak to you of the great tree on what 
used to be the Colman farm, in Deerfield, simply be- 
cause I had not seen it for many years, and did not 
like to trust my recollection. But I had it in memory, 
and even noted down, as one of the finest trees in sym- 
metry and beauty I had ever seen. I have received 
a document, signed by two citizens of a neighboring 
town, certified by the postmaster and a selectman, and 
these again corroborated, reinforced, and sworn to by 
a member of that extraordinary coUege-class to which 
it is the good fortune of my friend the Professor to 
belong, who, though he has formerly been a member 
of Congress, is, I believe, fully worthy of confidence. 
The tree "girts " eighteen and a half feet, and spreads 
over a hundred, and is a real beauty. I hope to meet 
my friend under its branches yet ; if we don't have 
" youth at the prow," we will have " pleasure at the 
'ehn." 

And just now, again, I have got a letter about some 
grand willows in Maine, and another about an elm in 
Wayland, but too late for anything but thanks." 

" There are trees scattered about our New England towns 
worth going a dozen or a score of miles to see, if one only knew 
where to look for them. A mile from where I am now writing 
(Beverly Farms, Essex County, Massachusetts) is one of the 
noblest oaks I have ever seen, not distinguished so much for 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 289 

[And this leads me to say, that I have received a 
great many communications, in prose and verse, since 
I began printing these notes. The last came this very 
morning, in the shape of a neat and brief poem, from 
New Orleans. I coidd not make any of them public, 
though sometimes requested to do so. Some of them 
have given me great pleasure, and encouraged me to 
believe I had friends whose faces I had never seen. 
If you are pleased with anything a writer says, and 
doubt whether to tell him of it, do not hesitate , a 
pleasant word is a cordial to one, who perhaps thinks 
he is tiring you, and so becomes tired himself. I purr 
very loud over a good, honest letter that says pretty 
things to me.] 

— Sometimes very yoimg persons send communica- 
tions which they want forwarded to editors ; and these 
young persons do not always seem to have right con- 
ceptions of these same editors, and of the public, and 
of themselves. Here is a letter I wrote to one of these 
young folks, but, on the whole, thought it best not to 
send. It is not fair to single out one for such sharp 
advice, where there are hundreds that are in need of 
it. 

Dear Sir, — You seem to be somewhat, but not a 
great deal, wiser than I was at your age. I don't wish 
to be understood as saying too much, for I think, 

its size, though its branches must spread a hundred feet from 
bough-end to bough-end, as for its beauty and lusty promise. A 
few minutes walk from the station at Rockport is a horse-chest- 
nut which is remarkable for size of trunk and richness of foliage. 
I found that it measures eight feet and three inches in circum- 
ference, about four feet from the ground. There may be larger 
horse-chestnut trees in New England, but I have not seen or 
heard of them. 



290 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BEEAKFAST-TABLE. 

without committing myself to any opinion on my pres- 
ent state, that I was not a Solomon at that stage of 
development. 

You long to "leap at a single bound into celebrity." 
Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remark- 
able. Fame usually comes to those who are thinking 
about something else, — very rarely to those who say 
to themselves, " Go to, now, let us be a celebrated in- 
dividual ! "' The struggle for fame, as such, commonly 
ends in notoriety ; — that ladder is easy to climb, but 
it leads to the pillory which is crowded with fools who 
could not hold their tongues and rogues who could not 
hide their tricks. 

If you have the consciousness of genius, do some- 
thing to show it. The world is pretty quick, nowar 
days, to catch the flavor of true originality; if you 
write anything remarkable, the magazines and news- 
papers will find you out, as the schoolboys find out 
where the ripe apples and pears are. Produce any- 
thing really good, and an intelligent editor will jump 
at it. Don't flatter yourself that any article of yours 
is rejected because you are unknown to fame. Noth- 
ing pleases an editor more than to get anything worth 
having from a new hand. There is always a dearth 
of really fine articles for a first-rate journal ; for of a 
hundred pieces received, ninety are at or below the 
sea-level ; some have water enough, but no head ; some 
head enough, but no water ; only two or three are 
from full reservoirs, high up that hill which is so hard 
to climb. 

You may have genius. The contrary is of course 
probable, but it is not demonstrated. If you have, 
the world wants you more than you want it. It has 
not only a desire, but a passion, for every spark of 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 291 

genius that shows itself among us ; there is not a bull- 
calf in our national pasture that can bleat a rhyme 
but it is ten to one, among his friends, and no takers, 
that he is the real, genuine, no-mistake Osiris. 

QiiestcequHlafaitf What has he done ? That 
was Napoleon's test. What have you done ? Turn 
up the faces of your picture-cards, my boy ! You 
need not make mouths at the public because it has not 
accepted you at your own fancy- valuation. Do the 
prettiest thing you can and wait your time. 

For the verses you send me, I will not say they are 
hopeless, and I dare not affirm that they show prom- 
ise. I am not an editor, but I know the standard 
of some editors. You must not expect to " leap with 
a single bound " into the society of those whom it is 
not flattery to call your betters. When " The Pacto- 
lian " has paid you for a copy of verses, — (I can fur- 
nish you a list of alliterative signatures, beginning 
with Annie Aureole and ending with Zoe Zenith), — 
when " The Rag-bag " has stolen your piece, after 
carefully scratching your name out, — when "The Nut- 
cracker " has thought you worth shelling, and strung 
the kernel of your cleverest poem, — then, and not till 
then, you may consider the presumption against you, 
from the fact of your rhyming tendency, as called in 
question, and let our friends hear from you, if you 
think it worth while. You may possibly think me 
too candid, and even accuse me of incivility ; but let 
me assure you that I am not half so plain-spoken as 
Nature, nor half so rude as Time. If you prefer the 
long jolting of public opinion to the gentle touch of 
friendship, try it like a man. Only remember this, — 
that, if a bushel of potatoes is shaken in a market-cart 
without springs to it, the small potatoes always get to 
the bottom. Believe me, etc., etc. 



292 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

I always think of verse-writers, when I am in this 
vein ; for these are by far the most exacting, eager, 
self-weighing, restless, querulous, unreasonable, liter- 
ary persons one is like to meet with. Is a young man 
in the habit of writing verses? Then the presump- 
tion is that he is an inferior person. For, look you, 
there are at least nine chances . in ten that he writes 
foor verses. Now the habit of chewing on rhymes 
without sense and soul to match them is, like that of 
using any other narcotic, at once a proof of feebleness 
and a debilitating agent. A young man can get rid 
of the presumption against him afforded by his writ- 
ing verses only by convincing us that they are verses 
worth writing. 

All this sounds hard and rough, but, observe, it is 
not addressed to any individual, and of course does 
not refer to any reader of these pages. I would 
always treat any given young person passing through 
the meteoric showers which rain down on the brief 
period of adolescence with great tenderness. God 
forgive us if we ever speak harshly to young creatures 
on the strength of these ugly truths, and so, sooner or 
later, smite some tender-souled poet or poetess on the 
lips who might have sung the world into sweet trances, 
had we not silenced the matin-song in its first low 
breathings! Just as my heart yearns over the un- 
loved, just so it sorrows for the ungifted who are 
doomed to the pangs of an undeceived self-estimate. 
I have always tried to be gentle with the most hope- 
less cases. My experience, however, has not been en- 
couraging. 

— X. Y., set. 18, a cheaply-got-up youth, with nar- 
row jaws, and broad, bony, cold, red hands, having 
been laughed at by the girls in his village, and "got 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 293 

the mitten" (pronounced mitt^n) two or three times, 
fails to souling and controlling, and youthing and 
truthing, in the newspapers. Sends me some strings 
of verses, candidates for the Orthopedic Infirmary, all 
of them, in which I learn for the millionth time one 
of the following facts : either that something about a 
chime is sublime, or that something about time is sub- 
lime, or that sometliing about a chime is concerned 
with time, or that something about a rhyme is sublime 
or concerned with time or with a chime. Wishes my 
opinion of the same, with advice as to his future 
course. 

What shall I do about it? Tell him the whole 
truth, and send him a ticket of admission to the In- 
stitution for Idiots and Feeble-minded Youth ? One 
does n't like to be cruel, — and yet one hates to lie. 
Therefore one softens down the ugly central fact of 
donkeyism, — recommends study of ^ood models, — 
that writing verse should be an incidental occupation 
only, not interfering with the hoe, the needle, the lap- 
stone, or the ledger, — and, above all, that there should 
be no hurry in printing what is written. Not the 
least use in all this. The poetaster who has tasted 
type is done for. He is like the man who has once 
been a candidate for the Presidency. He feeds on 
the madder of his delusion all his days, and his very 
bones grow red with the glow of his foolish fancy. 
One of these young brains is like a bunch of India 
crackers ; once touch fire to it and it is best to keep 
hands off until it has done popping, — if it ever stops. 
I have two letters on file ; one is a pattern of adula- 
tion, the other of impertinence. My reply to the first, 
containing the best advice I could give, conveyed 
in courteous language, had brought out the second. 



294 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Tliere was some sport in this, but Dulness is not com 
monly a game fish, and only sulks after he is struck. 
You may set it down as a truth which admits of few ex- 
ceptions, that those who ask your opinion really want 
your praise, and will be contented with nothing less. 

There is another kind of application to which edit- 
ors, or those supposed to have access to them, are li- 
able, and which often proves trying and painful. One 
is appealed to in behalf of some person in needy cir- 
cumstances who wishes to make a living by the pen. 
A manuscript accompanying the letter is offered for 
publication. It is not commonly brilliant, too often it is 
lamentably deficient. If Kachel's saying is true, that 
" fortune is the measure of intelligence," then poverty 
is evidence of limited capacity, which it too frequently 
proves to be, notwithstanding a noble exception here 
and there. Now an editor is a person under a contract 
with the public to furnish them with the best things 
he can afford for his money. Charity shown by the 
publication of an inferior article would be like the gen- 
erosity of Claude Duval and the other gentlemen high- 
waymen, who pitied the poor so much they robbed the 
rich to have the means of relieving them. 

Though I am not and never was an editor, I know 
something of the trials to which they are submitted. 
They have nothing to do but to develop enormous cal- 
luses at every point of contact with authorship. Their 
business is not a matter of sympathy, but of intellect. 
They must reject the unfit productions of those whom 
they long to befriend, because it would be a profligate 
charity to accept them. One cannot burn his house 
down to warm the hands even of the fatherless and 
the widow. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 295 
THE PROFESSOR UNDER CHLOROFORM. 

— You have n't heard about my friend the Profes- 
sor's first experiment in the use of anaesthetics, have 
you ? 

He was mightily i3leased with the reception of that 
poem of his about the chaise. He spoke to me once 
or twice about another poem of similar character, he 
wanted to read me, which I told him I would listen to 
and criticise. 

One day, after dinner, he came in with his face tied 
up, looking very red in the cheeks and heavy about 
the eyes. — Hy'r'ye ? — he said, and made for an arm- 
chair, in which he placed first his hat and then his per- 
son, going smack through the crown of the former as 
neatly as they do the trick at the circus. The Profes- 
sor jumped at the explosion as if he had sat down on 
one of those small caltrops our grandfathers used to 
sow round in the grass when there were Indians about, 
— iron stars, each ray a rusty thorn an inch and a half 
long, — stick through moccasins into feet, — cripple 
'em on the spot, and give 'em lockjaw in a day or two. 

At the same time he let off one of those big words 
which lie at the bottom of the best man's vocabulary, 
but perhaps never turn up in his life, — just as every 
man's hair may stand on end, but in most men it never 



After he had got calm, he pulled out a sheet or two 
of manuscript, together with a smaller scrap, on wMch, 
as he said, he had just been writing an introduction or 
prelude to the main performance. A certain suspi- 
cion had come into my mind that the Professor was 
not quite right, which was confirmed by the way lie 
talked ; but I let him begin. This is the way he read 
it: — 



296 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 



Prelude. 

I 'm the fellah that tole one day 
The tale of the won' erf ul one-hoss-shay. 
Wan' to hear another ? Say. 

— Funny, was n' it? Made me laugh, — 
I 'm too modest, I am, by half, — 
Made me laugh 's though I sh'd split, — 
Cahn' a fellah like fellah's own wit ? 

— Fellahs keep sayin', — " Well, now that 's nice; 
Did it once, but cahn' do it twice." — 

Don' you b'lieve the'z no more fat; 
Lots in the kitch'n 'z good 'z that. 
Fus'-rate throw, 'n' no mistake, — 
Han' us the props for another shake; — 
Know I '11 try, 'n' guess I '11 win; 
Here sh' goes for hit 'm ag'in! 

Here I thought it necessary to interpose. — Pro- 
fessor, — I said, — you are inebriated. The style of 
what you call your " Prelude " shows that it was 
written under cerebral excitement. Your articulation 
is confused. You have told me three times in suc- 
cession, in exactly the same words, that I was the 
only true friend you had in the world that you would 
unbutton your heart to. You smell distinctly and 
decidedly of spirits. — I spoke, and paused ; tender, 
but firm. 

Two large tears orbed themselves beneath the Pro- 
fessor's lids, — in obedience to the principle of gravi- 
tation celebrated in that delicious bit of bladdery 
bathos, "The very law that moulds a tear," with 
which the " Edinburgh Eeview " attempted to put 
down Master George Gordon when that young man 
was foolishly trying to make himself conspicuous. 

One of these tears peeped over the edge of the lid 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 297 

until it lost its balance, — slid an inch and waited for 
reinforcements, — swelled again, — rolled down a lit- 
tle further, — stopped, — moved on, — and at last fell 
on the back of the Professor's hand. He held it up 
for me to look at, and lifted his eyes, brimful, tiU 
they met mine. 

I could n't stand it, — I always break down when 
folks cry in my face, — so I hugged him, and said he 
was a dear old boy, and asked him kindly what was 
the matter with him, and what made him smell so 
dreadfully strong of spirits. 

Upset his alcohol lamp, — he said, — and spilt the 
alcohol on his legs. That was it. — But what had he 
been doing to get his head into such a state? — had 
he reaUy committed an excess ? What was the mat- 
ter ? — Then it came out that he had been taking 
chloroform to have a tooth out, which had left him in 
a very queer state, in which he had written the " Pre- 
lude " given above, and under the influence of which 
he evidently was stiU. 

I took the manuscript from his hands and read 
the following continuation of the lines he had begun 
to read me, while he made up for two or three nights' 
lost sleep as he best might. 

PARSON TURELL'S LEGACY: 

OR, THE PRESIDENT'S OLD ARM-CHAIR. 

A MATHEMATICAL STORY. 

Facts respecting an old arm-chair. 
At Cambridge. Is kept in the College there. 
Seems but little the worse for wear. 
That 's remarkable when I say 
It was old in President Holyoke's day. 



298 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 

(One of his boys, perhaps you know, 
Died, at one hundred^ years ago.) 
He took lodging for rain or shine 
Under green bed-clothes in '69. 

Know old Cambridge ? Hope you do. — ' 
Born there? Don't say so! I was, too. 
(Born in a house with a gambrel-roof , — - 
Standing still, if you must have proof. — 
" Gambrel? — Gambrel? " — Let me beg 
You '11 look at a horse's hinder leg, — 
First great angle above the hoof, — 
That 's the gambrel; hence gambrel-roof.) 

— Nicest place that ever was seen, — 
Colleges red and Common green. 
Sidewalks brownish with trees between. 
Sweetest spot beneath the skies 
When the canker-worms don't rise, — 
When the dust, that sometimes flies 
Into your mouth and ears and eyes, 

In a quiet slumber lies. 

Not in the shape of unbaked pies 

Such as barefoot children prize. 

A kind of harbor it seems to be. 
Facing the flow of a boundless sea. 
Kows of gray old Tutors stand 
Ranged like rocks above the sand; 
Rolling beneath them, soft and green, 
Breaks the tide of bright sixteen, — 
One wave, two waves, three waves, four;, 
Sliding up the sparkling floor; 
Then it ebbs to flow no more. 
Wandering off from shore to shore 
With its freight of golden ore ! 

— Pleasant place for boys to play; — 
Better keep your girls away; 
Hearts get rolled as pebbles do 
Which countless fingering waves pursue. 
And every classic beach is strown 

With heart-shaped pebbles of blood-red stone. 



THE AUTOCRAT OP THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 299 

But this is neither here nor there; — 
I 'm talking about an old arm-chair. 
You 've heard, no doubt, of Parson Turkll? 
Over at Medford he used to dwell; 
Married one of the Mathers' folk; 
Got with his wife a chair of oak, — 
Funny old chair, with seat like wedge, 
Sharp behind and broad front edge, — 
One of the oddest of human things, 
Turned all over with knobs and rings, — 
But heavy, and wide, and deep, and grand, — 
Fit for the worthies of the land, — 
Chief-Justice Sewall a cause to try in, 
Or Cotton Mather to sit, — and lie, — in. 

— Parson Turell bequeathed the same 
To a certain student, — Smith by name; 
These were the terms, as we are told: 

" Saide Smith saide Chaire to have and holde; 

When he doth graduate, then to passe 

To y^ oldest Youth in y^ Senior Classe. 

On Payment of " — (naming a certain sum) — 

*' By him to whom y^ Chaire shall come; 

He to y® oldest Senior next. 

And soe forever," — (thus runs the text,) — 

" But one Crown lesse then he gave to claime, 

That being his Debte for use of same." 

Smith transferred it to one of the Browns, 
And took his money, — five silver crowns. 
Brown delivered it up to Moore, 
Who paid, it is plain, not five, but four. 
Moore made over the chair to Lee, 
Who gave him crowns of silver three. 
Lee conveyed it unto Drew, 
And now the payment, of course, was two. 
Drew gave up the chair to Dunn, — 
All he got, as you see, was one. 
Dunn released the chair to Hall, 
And got by the bargain no crown at all. 

— And now it passed to a second Brown, 



800 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 

Who took it, and likewise claimed a crown. 
When Broivn conveyed it unto Ware, 
Having had one crown, to make it fair, 
He paid him two crowns to take the chair; 
And Ware, being honest, (as all Wares be,) 
He paid one Potter, who took it, three. 
Four got Robinson; five got Dix; 
Johnson primus demanded six ; 
And so the sum kept gathering still 
Till after the battle of Bunker's Hill 

— When paper money became so cheap, 
Folks would n't count it, but said " a heap," 
A certain Richards, the books declare, 

(A. M. in '90? I 've looked with care 
Through the Triennial, — name not there.') 
This person, Richards, was offered then 
Eight score pounds, but would have ten; 
Nine, I think, was the sum he took, — 
Not quite certain, — but see the book. 

— By and by the wars were still, 

But nothing had altered the Parson's will. 
The old arm-chair was solid yet. 
But saddled with such a monstrous debt ! 
Things grew quite too bad to bear, 
Paying such sums to get rid of the chair! 
But dead men's fingers hold awful tight, 
And there was the will in black and white, 
Plain enough for a child to spell. 
What should be done no man could tell. 
For the chair was a kind of nightmare curse, 
And every season but made it worse. 

As a last resort, to clear the doubt, 
They got old Governor Hancock out. 
The Governor came, with his Light-horse Troop 
And his mounted truckmen, all cock-a-hoop; 
Halberds glittered and colors flew, 
French horns whinnied and trumpets blew, 
The yellow fifes whistled between their teeth 
And the bumble-bee bass-drums boomed beneath; 



THE AUTOCEAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 



301 



So he rode with all his band, 

Till the President met him, cap in hand. 

The Governor " hefted " the crowns, and said, — > 

"A will is a will, and the Parson's dead." 
The Governor hefted the crowns. Said he, — 
" There is your p'int. And here 's my fee. 
These are the terms you must fulfil, — 
On such conditions I break the will!" 
The Governor mentioned what these should be. 
(Just wait a minute and then you '11 see.) 
The President prayed. Then all was still, 
And the Governor rose and broke the will! 
— " About those conditions? " Well, now you go 
And do as I tell you, and then you '11 know. 
Once a year, on Commencement-day, 
If you '11 only take the pains to stay, 
You '11 see the President in the Chair, 
Likewise the Governor sitting there. 
The President rises ; both old and young 
May hear his speech in a foreign tongue, 
The meaning whereof, as lawyers swear, 
Is this: Can I keep this old arm-chair? 
And then his Excellency bows, 

As much as to say that he allows. 

The Vice-Gub. next is called by name; 

He bows like t'other, which means the same. 

And all the officers round 'em bow, 

As much as to say that they allow. 

And a lot of parchments about the chair 

Are handed to witnesses then and there, 

And then the lawyers hold it clear 

That the chair is safe for another year. 

God bless you. Gentlemen! Learn to give 
Money to colleges while you live. 
Don't be silly and think you 'II try 
To bother the colleges, when you die, 
With codicil this, and codicil that, 
That Knowledge may starve while Law grows fat? 
For there never was pitcher that would n't spill, 
And there 's always a flaw in a donkey's will! 



302 THE AUTOCRAT Or THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

— Hospitality is a good deal a matter of latitude, I 
suspect. The shade of a palm-tree serves an African 
for a hut ; his dwelling is all door and no walls ; every- 
body can come in. To make a morning call on an 
Esquimaux acquaintance, one must creep through a 
long tunnel ; his house is all walls and no door, ex- 
cept such a one as an apple with a worm-hole has. 
One might, very probably, trace a regular gradation 
between these two extremes. In cities where the 
evenings are generally hot, the people have porches 
at their doors, where they sit, and this is, of course, 
a provocative to the interchange of civilities. A good 
deal, which in colder regions is ascribed to mean dis- 
positions, belongs really to mean temperature. 

Once in a while, even in our Northern cities, at 
noon, in a very hot summer's day, one may realize, 
by a sudden extension in his sphere of consciousness, 
how closely he is shut up for the most part. — Do 
you not remember something like this? July, be- 
tween 1 and 2 p. M., Fahrenheit 96°, or thereabout. 
Windows all gaping, like the mouths of panting dogs. 
Long, stinging cry of a locust comes in from a tree, 
half a mile off ; had forgotten there was such a tree. 
Baby's screams from a house several blocks distant ; 
— never knew there were any babies in the neighbor- 
hood before. Tinman pounding something that clat- 
ters dreadfully, — very distinct but don't remember 
any tinman's shop near by. Horses stamping on 
pavement to get off flies. When you hear these 
four somids, you may set it down as a warm day. 
Then it is that one would like to imitate the mode 
of life of the native at Sierra Leone, as somebody 
has described it : stroll into the market in natural 
costume, — buy a water-melon for a halfpenny, — • 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 303 

split it, and scoop out the middle, — sit down in one 
half of the empty rind, clap the other on one's head, 
and feast upon the pulp. 

— I see some of the London journals have been 
attacking some of their literary people for lecturing, 
on the ground of its being a public exhibition of them-= 
selves for money. A popular author can print his 
lecture ; if he deliver it, it is a case of qucBstum cor- 
pore^ or making profit of liis person. None but 
" snobs " do that. Ergo^ etc. To this I reply, — 
JSfegatur minor. Her most Gracious Majesty, the 
Queen, exhibits herself to the public as a part of the 
service for which she is paid. We do not consider 
it low-bred in her to pronounce her own speech, and 
should prefer it so to hearing it from any other per- 
son, or reading it. His Grace and his Lordship ex- 
hibit themselves very often for popularity, and their 
houses every day for money. — No, if a man shows 
himself other than he is, if he belittles himself before 
an audience for hire, then he acts unworthily. But a 
true word, fresh from the lips of a true man, is worth 
paying for, at the rate of eight dollars a day, or even 
of fifty dollars a lecture. The taunt must be an out- 
break of jealousy against the renowned authors who 
have the audacity to be also orators. The sub-lieuten- 
ants (of the press) stick a too popular writer and 
speaker with an epithet in England, instead of with 
a rapier, as in France. — Poh! All England is one 
great menagerie, and, all at once, the jackal, who ad- 
mires the gilded cage of the royal beast, must protest 
against the vulgarity of the talking-bird's and the 
nightingale's being willing to become a part of the ex- 
hibition ! 



304 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

THE LONG PATH. 

(Last of the Parentheses.') 

Yes, that was my last walk with the schoolmistress. 
It hai^pened to be the end of a term ; and before the 
next began, a very nice young woman, who had been 
her assistant, was announced as her successor, and she 
was provided for elsewhere. So it was no longer the 
schoolmistress that I walked with, but — Let us not 
be in unseemly haste. I shall call her the school- 
mistress still ; some of you love her under that name. 

— When it became known among the boarders 
that two of their number had jomed hands to walk 
down the long path of life side by side, there was, as 
you may suppose, no small sensation. I confess I 
pitied our landlady. It took her aU of a suddin, — 
she said. Had not known that we was keepin' com- 
pany, and never mistrusted anything partic'lar. Ma'am 
was right to better herseK. Did n't look very rugged 
to take care of a femily, but could get hired haalp, 
she calc'lated. — The great maternal instinct came 
crowding up in her soul just then, and her eyes wan- 
dered until they settled on her daughter. 

— No, poor, dear woman, — that could not have 
been. But I am dropping one of my internal tears 
for you, with this pleasant smile on my face all the 
time. 

The great mystery of God's providence is the per- 
mitted crushing out of flowering instincts. Life is 
maintained by the respiration of oxygen and of sen- 
timents. In the long catalogue of scientific cruelties 
there is hardly anything quite so painful to think of 
as that experiment of putting an animal under the 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 305 

bell of an air-pump and exhausting the air from it. 
[I never saw the accursed trick performed. Laus 
Deo !'\ There comes a time when the souls of human 
beings, women, perhaps, more even than men, begin 
to faint for the atmosphere of the affections they were 
made to breathe. Then it is that Society places its 
transparent bell-glass over the young woman who is to 
be the subject of one of its fatal experiments. The 
element by which only the heart lives is sucked out of 
her crystalline prison. Watch her through its trans- 
parent walls ; — her bosom is heaving ; but it is in a 
vacuum. Death is no riddle, compared to this. I 
remember a poor girl's story in the " Book of Mar- 
tyrs." The " dry-pan and the gradual fire " were the 
images that frightened her most. How many have 
withered and wasted under as slow a torment in the 
walls of that larger Inquisition which we call Civiliza- 
tion ! 

Yes, my surface-thought laughs at you, you foolish, 
plain, overdressed, mincing, cheaply-organized, self- 
saturated young person, whoever you may be, now 
reading this, — little thinking you are what I describe, 
and in blissful unconsciousness that you are destined 
to the lingering asphyxia of soul which is the lot of 
such multitudes worthier than yourself. But it is only 
my surface-thought which laughs. For that great pro- 
cession of the UNLOVED, who not only wear the crown 
of thorns, but must hide it under the locks of brown 
or gray, — under the snowy cap, under the chilling 
turban, — hide it even from themselves, — perhaps 
never know they wear it, though it kills them, — there 
is no depth of tenderness in my nature that Pity has 
not sounded. Somewhere, — somewhere, — love is in 
store for them, — the universe must not be allowed to 



806 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

fool them so cruelly. What infinite pathos in the 
small, half-unconscious artifices by which unattractive 
young persons seek to recommend themselves to the 
favor of those towards whom our dear sisters, the un- 
loved, like the rest, are impelled by their God-given 
instincts ! 

Read what the singing- women — one to ten thou- 
sand of the suffering women — tell us, and think of 
the griefs that die unspoken ! Nature is in earnest 
when she makes a woman ; and there are women 
enough lying in the next churchyard with very com- 
monplace blue slate-stones at their head and feet, for 
whom it was just as true that " all sounds of life as- 
sumed one tone of love," as for Letitia Landon, of 
whom Elizabeth Browning said it ; but she could give 
words to her grief, and they could not. • — Will you 
hear a few stanzas of mine ? 

THE VOICELESS. 

We count the broken lyres that rest 

Where the sweet wailing singers slumber, — 
But o'er their silent sister's breast 

The wild flowers who will stoop to number? 
A few can touch the magic string, 

And noisy Fame is proud to win them ; — 
Alas for those who never sing, 

But die with all their music in them ! 

Nay, grieve not for the dead alone 

Whose song has told their hearts' sad story, — 
Weep for the voiceless, who have known 

The cross without the crown of glory! 
Not where Leucadian breezes sweep 

O'er Sappho's memory-haunted billow, 
But where the glistening night-dews weep 

On nameless sorrow's churchyard pillow. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 307 

O hearts that break and give no sign 

Save whitening lip and fading tresses, 
Till Death pours out his cordial wine 

Slow-dropped from Misery's crushing presses, — 
If singing breath or echoing chord 

To every hidden pang were given, 
What endless melodies were poured. 

As sad as earth, as sweet as heaven! 



I hope that our landlady's daughter is not so badly 
off, after all. That young man from another city, 
who made the remark which you remember about 
Boston State-house and Boston folks, has appeared at 
our table repeatedly of late, and has seemed to me 
rather attentive to this young lady. Only last evening 
I saw him leaning over her while she was playing the 
accordion, — indeed, I undertook to join them in a 
song, and got as far as " Come rest in this boo-oo," 
when, my voice getting tremulous, I turned off, as one 
steps out of a procession, and left the basso and so- 
prano to finish it. I see no reason why this young 
woman should not be a very proper match for a man 
who laughs about Boston State-house. He can't be 
very particular. 

The young fellow whom I have so often mentioned 
was a little free in his remarks, but very good-natured. 
— Sorry to have you go, — he said. — Schoolma'am 
made a mistake not to wait for me. Have n't taken 
anything but mournin' fruit at breakfast since I heard 
of it. — Mourning fruity — said I, — what 's that ? — 
Huckleberries and blackberries, — said he ; — could n't 
eat in colors, raspberries, currants, and such, after a 
solemn thing like this happening. — The conceit 
seemed to please the young fellow. If you will be- 
lieve it, when we came down to breakfast the next 



308 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

morning, he had carried it out as follows. You know 
those odious little " saas-plates " that figure so largely 
at boarding-houses, and especially at taverns, into 
which a strenuous attendant female trowels little dabs, 
sombre of tint and heterogeneous of composition, which 
it makes you feel homesick to look at, and into which 
you poke the elastic coppery teaspoon with the air of 
a cat dipping her foot into a wash-tub, — (not that I 
mean to say anything against them, for, when they are 
of tinted porcelain or starry many-faceted crystal, 
and hold clean bright berries, or pale virgin honey, 
or " lucent syrups tinct with cinnamon," and the tea- 
spoon is of white silver, with the Hall-mark, solid, but 
not brutally heavy, — as people in the green stage of 
millionism will have them, — I can dally with their 
amber semi-fluids or glossy spherules without a 
shiver), — you know these small, deep dishes, I say. 
When we came down the next morning, each of these 
(two only excepted) was covered with a broad leaf. 
On lifting this, each boarder found a small heap of 
solemn black huckleberries. But one of those plates 
held red currants, and was covered with a red rose ; 
the other held white currants, and was covered with a 
white rose. There was a laugh at this at first, and 
then a short silence, and I noticed that her lip trem- 
bled, and the old gentleman opposite was in trouble to 
get at his bandanna handkerchief. 

— " What was the use in waiting ? We should be 
too late for Switzerland, that season, if we waited 
much longer." — The hand I held trembled in mine, 
and the eyes fell meekly, as Esther bowed herself be- 
fore the feet of Ahasuerus. — She had been reading 
that chapter, for she looked up, — if there was a film 
of moisture over her eyes there was also the faintest 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 309 

shadow of a distant smile skirting her lips, but not 
enough to accent the dimples, — and said, in her 
pretty, still way, — "If it please the king, and if I 
have found favor in his sight, and the thing seem 
right before the king, and I be pleasing in his 
eyes " — 

I don't remember what King Ahasuerus did or said 
when Esther got just to that point of her soft, humble 
words, — but I know what I did. That quotation 
from Scripture was cut short, anyhow. We came to 
a compromise on the great question, and the time was 
settled for the last day of summer. 

In the mean time, I talked on with our boarders, 
much as usual, as you may see by what I have re- 
ported. I must say, I was pleased with a certain ten- 
derness they all showed toward us, after the first 
excitement of the news was over. It came out in 
trivial matters, — but each one, in his or her way, 
manifested kindness. Our landlady, for instance, 
when we had chickens, sent the liver instead of the 
gizzard^ with the wing, for the schoolmistress. This 
was not an accident; the two are never mistaken, 
though some landladies appear as if they did not 
know the difference. The whole of the company were 
even more respectfully attentive to my remarks than 
usual. There was no idle punning, and very little 
winking on the part of that lively young gentleman 
who, as the reader may remember, occasionally inter- 
posed some playful question or remark, which could 
hardly be considered relevant, — except when the least 
allusion was made to matrimony, when he would look 
at the landlady's daughter, and wink with both sides 
of his face, until she would ask what he was pokin' 
his fun at her for, and if he was n't ashamed of him- 



310 THE AUTOCKAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

self. In fact, they all behaved very handsomely, so 
that I really felt sorry at the thought of leaving my 
boarding-house. 

I suppose you think, that, because I lived at a plain 
widow-woman's plain table, I was of course more or 
less infirm in point of worldly fortune. You may not 
be sorry to learn, that, though not what great meir 
chants call very rich, I was comfortable, — comforta-" 
ble, — so that most of those moderate luxuries I de- 
scribed in my verses on Contentment — most of them, 
I say — were within our reach, if we chose to have 
them. But I found out that the schoolmistress had 
a vein of charity about her, which had hitherto been 
worked on a small silver and copper basis, which made 
her think less, perhaps, of luxuries than even I did, — 
modestly as I have expressed my wishes. 

It is a rather pleasant thing to tell a poor young 
woman, whom one has contrived to win without show- 
ing his rent-roll, that she has found what the world 
values so highly, in following the lead of her affec- 
tions. That was an enjoyment I was now ready for. 

I began abruptly : — Do you know that you are a 
rich young person ? 

I know that I am very rich, — she said. — Heaven 
has given me more than I ever asked ; for I had not 
thought love was ever meant for me. 

It was a woman's confession, and her voice fell to 
a whisper as it threaded the last words. 

I don't mean that, — I said, — you blessed little 
saint and seraph ! — if there 's an angel missing in the 
New Jerusalem, inquire for her at this boarding-house J 
■ — I don't mean that ! I mean that I — that is, you 
— am — are — confound it ! — I mean that you '11 be 
what most people call a lady of fortune. — And I 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 311 

looked full in her eyes for the effect of the announce- 
ment. 

There was n't any. She said she was thankful that 
I had what would save me from drudgery, and that 
some other time I shoidd tell her about it. — I never 
made a greater failure in an attempt to produce a 
sensation. 

So the last day of summer came. It was our choice 
to go to the church, but we had a kind of reception at 
the boarding-house. The presents were all arranged, 
and among them none gave more pleasure than the 
modest tributes of our fellow-boarders, — for there was 
not one, I believe, who did not send something. The 
landlady would insist on making an elegant bride- 
cake, with her own hands ; to which Master Benjamin 
Franklin wished to add certain embellishments out of 
his private funds, — namely, a Cupid in a mouse-trap, 
done in white sugar, and two miniature flags with the 
stars and stripes, which had a very pleasing effect, I as- 
sure you. The landlady's daughter sent a richly bound 
copy of Tupper's Poems. On a blank leaf was tlie fol- 
lowing, written in a very delicate and careful hand : — 

Presented to . . . by . . . 

On the eve ere her union in holy matrimony. 
May sunshine ever beam*o'er her! 

Even the poor relative thought she must do some- 
thing, and sent a copy of " The Whole Duty of 
Man," bound in very attractive variegated sheepskin, 
the edges nicely marbled. From the divinity-student 
came the loveliest English edition of " Keble's Chris- 
tian Year." I opened it, when it came, to the Fourth 
Sunday in Lent^ and read that angelic poem, sweeter 
than anything I can remember since Xavier's "My 
God, I love Thee." 1 am not a Churchman, — I 



312 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

don't believe in planting oaks in flower-pots, — but 
such a poem as " The Rosebud " makes one's heart a 
proselyte to the culture it grows from. Talk about 
it as much as you like, — one's breeding shows itself 
nowhere more than in his religion. A man should be 
a gentleman in his hymns and prayers ; the fondness 
for " scenes," among vulgar saints, contrasts so meanly 
with that — 

" God only and good angels look 
Behind the blissful scene," — 

and that other, — 

" He could not trust his melting soul 
But in his Maker's sight," — 

that I hope some of them will see this, and read the 
poem, and profit by it. 

My laugliing and winking young friend undertook 
to procure and arrange the flowers for the table, and 
did it with immense zeal. I never saw him look hap- 
pier than when he came in, his hat saucily on one side, 
and a cheroot in his mouth, with a huge bunch of tea- 
roses, which he said were for " Madam." 

One of the last things that came was an old square 
box, smelling of camphor, tied and sealed. It bore, 
in faded ink, the marks, " Calcutta, 1805." On open- 
ing it, we found a white Cashmere shawl with a very 
brief note from the dear old gentleman opposite, say- 
ing that he had kept this some years thinking he 
might want it, and many more, not laiowing what to 
do with it, — that he had never seen it unfolded since 
he was a young supercargo, — and now, if she would 
spread it on her shoulders, it would make him feel 
young to look at it. 

Poor Bridget, or Biddy, our red-armed maid of all 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 313 

work! What must she do but buy a small copper 
breast-pin and put it under " Schoolma'am's " plate 
that morning, at breakfast ? And Schoolma'am would 
wear it, — though I made her cover it, as well as I 
coidd, with a tea-rose. 

It was my last breakfast as a boarder, and I could 
not leave them in utter silence. 

Good-by, — I said, — my dear friends, one and all 
of you ! I have been long with you, and I find it hard 
parting. I have to thank you for a thousand courte- 
sies, and above all for the patience and indulgence 
with which you have listened to me when I have tried 
to instruct or amuse you. My friend the Professor 
(who, as well as my friend the Poet, is unavoidably 
absent on this interesting occasion) has given me rea- 
son to suppose that he would occupy my empty chair 
about the first of January next. If he comes among 
you, be kind to him, as you have been to me. May 
the Lord bless you all ! — And we shook hands all 
round the table. 

Half an hour afterwards the breakfast things and 
the cloth were gone. I looked up and down the length 
of the bare boards ove-r which I had so often uttered 
my sentiments and experiences — and — Yes, I am a 
man, like another. 

AU sadness vanished, as, in the midst of these old 
friends of mine, whom you know, and others a little 
more up in the world, perhaps, to whom I have not 
introduced you, I took the schoolmistress before the 
altar from the hands of the old gentleman who used 
to sit opposite, and who would insist on giving her 
away. 

And now we two are walking the long path in peace 
together. The "schoolmistress" finds her skill in 



314 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

teaching called for again, without going abroad to 
seek little scholars. Those visions of mine have all 
come true. 

I hope you all love me none the less for anything I 
have told you. Farewell I 



# 



INDEX. 



Abuse, all good attempts get, 81. 

Estivation, 263. 

Affiuities and antipathies, 220. 

Agassiz, 2. 

Age, softening effects of, 81 ; 
when fire joes down, 150 ; Roman 
age of enlistment, 151 ; its changes a 
string of insults, 153. 

A good time going, 223. 

Air-pump, animal under, 304. 

Album Verses, 15. 

Alps, effect of looking at, 267. 

American, the Englishman reinforced 
(a noted person tliiuks), 238. 

Analogies, power of seeing, S3. 

Anatomist's Hymn, The, 175. 

Anglo-Saxons die out in America (Dr. 
Knox thinks), 238. 

Anniversaries dreaded by the Poet, and 
why, 222. 

Argonauta, 97. 

Arguments, what are those which spoil 
conversation, 10. 

Aristocracy, the forming American, 259 ; 
pluck the back-bone of, 261. 

Artists apt to act mechanically on their 
brains, 187. 

Assessors, Heaven's, effect of meeting 
one of them, 92. 

Asylum, the, 247. 

Audience, average intellect of, 140 ; as- 
pect of, 140 : a compound vertebrate, 
141. 

Audiences very nearly alike, 141 ; good 
feeling and intelligence of, 142. 

Author docs not hate anybody, 219. 

Authors, jockeying of, 37 ; purr if skil- 
fully handled, 49; liate those who 
call them droll, i j ; ashamed of being 
lonny, 50; always praise after fifty, 
81. 

Automatic principles appear more prev- 
alent the more we study, 85 ; mental 
actions, 134. 

Averages, their awful imiformity, 140. 

Babies, old, 154. 
Bacon, Lord, 271. 
Balzac, 149, 271. 

Beauties, vulgar, their virtuous indigna- 
tion on being looked at, l&l. 



Beliefs like ancient drlnking-glasses, 15. 

Bell-glass, young woman under, 305. 

Benicia Boy, not challenged by the Pro- 
fessor, and why, 173. 

Benjamin Franklm, the landlady's son, 
12, 53, 57, 87, 116, 135, 136, 240, 311. 

Berksliire, 23?, 245, 265. 

Berne, leap from the platform at, 281. 

Blake, Mr., his Jesse Rural, 90. 

Blondes, two kinds of, 184. 

'• Blooded " horses, 37. 

Boat, the Professor's own, description 
of, 168. 

Boating, the Professor describes his, 
163. 

Boats, the Professor's fleet of, 164. 

Books, hating, 62 ; society a strong so- 
lution of, 62; the mind sometimes 
feels above them, 132 ; a man's and 
a woman's reading, 275. 

Bores, all men are, except when we 
want them, 6. 

Boston, seven wise men of, their say- 
ings, 124. 

Bowie-knife, the Romam gladius modi- 
fied, 19. 

Brain, upper and lower stories of, 179 ; 
attempts to reach mechanically, 187. 

Braira, seventy-year clocks, 185 ; con- 
taining ovarian eggs, how to know 
them, 196. 

Bridget becomes a caryatid, 100; pre- 
sents a breast-pin, 313. 

Browne, Sir Thomas, admirable senti- 
ment of, 93. 

Browning, Elizabeth, 306. 

Bruce's Addross, alteration of, 47. 

Bulbous-headed people, 7. 

Bunker-hill monument, rocking of, 2.%. 

Byron, his line about striking the elec- 
tric chain, 78. 

Cache, children make instinctively, 204. 

Calamities, grow old rapidly m propor- 
tion to their magnitude, 31 ; the recol- 
lection of returns after the first sleep 
as if new, 32. 

Calculating machine, 8; power, least 
human of qualities, 9. 

Call him not old, 171. 

Campbell, misquotation o£, 71 



316 



INDEX. 



Canary-bird, swimming movements of, 

85. 

Cant terms, use of, 256. 

Carlyle, his article on Boswell, 280. 

Carpenter's bench. Author works at, 
180. 

Chambers Street, 272. 

Chamouni, 267. 

Characteristics, Carlyle's article, 55. 

Ciiarles Street, 273. 

Chaucer compared to an Easter-Beurr^, 
83. 

Chess-playing, conversation compared 
to, 64. 

Children, superstitious little wretches 
and spiritual cowards, 204. 

Chloroform, Professor, the, imder, 295. 

Chryso-aristocracy, our, the weak point 
in, 260. 

Cicero de Senectute, Professor reads, 
150 ; his treatise de SenecliUe, 156. 

Cincinnati, how not to pronounce, 288. 

Circles intellectual, 266. 

Cities, some of the smaller ones charm- 
ing, 127 ; leaking of nature into, 273. 

Clergy i-arely hear sermons, 29. 

Clergymen, their patients not always 
truthfid, 86. 

Clock of the Andover Seminary, 287. 

Closet full of sweet smells, 7S. 

Clubs, advantages of, 64. 

Coat, constructed on a priori grounds. 
67. 

Cobb, Sylvanus, Jr., 16. 

Coffee, 246, 248. 

Cold-blooded creatures, 130. 

Coleridge, his remark on literary men's 
needing a profession, 179. 

Coliseum, visit to, 279. 

Comet, the late, 24. 

Commencement day, like the start for 
the Derby, 95. 

Common sense, as we understand it, 14. 

Communications received by the Au- 
thor, 288. 

Company, the sad, 247. 

Conceit bred by little localized powers 
and narrow streaks of knowledge, 9 ; 
natural to the mind as a centre to a 
circle, 10 ; uses of, 10 ; makes people 
cheerful, 10. 

Constitution, American female, 43 ; in 
choice of summer residence, 265. 

Contentment, 268. 

Controversy, hydrostatic paradox of, 

114. 
Conundrums indulged in by the com- 
pany, 251 ; rebuked by the Author, 
252. 
Conversation, very serious matter, 5 ; 
with some persons weakening, 5 ; 
great faults of, 10 ; spoiled by certain 
kinds of arginnent, 10 ; a code of final- 
ities necessary to, 11 ; compared to 
Italian game of mora, 15 ; shapes our 
thoughts, 27 ; Blnir-\i\g of reported, 
(Wj one of the fine arts, 52 ; compared 



to chess-plajdng, 64 ; depends on how 

much is taken for granted, 64 ; of 

Lecturers, 65. 
Cookeson, William, of AU-Souls College, 

87. 
Copley, his portrait of the merchant- 

uncle, 21 ; of the great-grandmother. 

21. 
" Correspondent, our Foreign," 117. 
Counterparts of people in many difter- 

ent cities, 138. 
Cowper, 184 ; his lines on his mother's 

portrait, 281 ; his lines on the "Royal 

George," 281. 
Creed, the Author's, 89. 
Crinoline, Otaheitan, 19. 
Crow and king-bird, 29. 
Curls, tiat circular, on temples, 18. 

Dandies, uses of, 257 ; illustrious ones 
258, 259 ; men are born, 259. 

Davidson, Lucretia and Margaret, 184. 

Deacon's Masterpiece, The, 252. 

Death as a form of rhetoric, 132 ; intro- 
duction to, 209. 

Deerfield, elm m, 288. 

Devizes, woman struck dead at, 281. 

Dighton Rock, inscription on, 246. 

Dimensions, three of solids, handling 
ideas as if they had, 85. 

Divinity, doctors of, many people quali- 
fied to be, 29. 

Divinity Student, the, 1, 42, 83, 84, 87, 
88, 101, 110, 124, 125, 132, 135, 182, 
187, 193, 197, 203, 220, 229, 230, 251, 
258, 262, 311. 

Doctor, old, his catalogue of books for 
light reading, 157. 

Drinking-glasses, ancient, beliefs like, 
15. 

Droll, authors dislike to be called, 49. 

Drunkenness often a punishment, 190. 

Dull persons great comforts at times, 6 ; 
happiness of finding we are, 61. 

Ears, voluntary movement of, 10. 

Earth, not ripe yet, 24. 

Earthquake, to launch the Leviathan, 
72. 

Eblis, hall of, 247. 

Editors, appeals to their benevolence, 
293 ; must get callous, 294. 

Education, professional, most of our 
people have had, 28. 

Eggs, ovarian, intellectual, 195. 

Elm, American, 232 ; the great John- 
ston, 233; Hatfield, 235; Sheffield, 
235 ; West Springfield, 235 • Pittsfield, 
236 ; Newburyport, 236 , Cohasset, 
236 ; English and American, compari- 
son of, 237. 

Elms, Springfield, 234; first-class, 235; 
second-class, 2b^ ; Mr. Paddock's row 
of, 239 ; in Andover, 287 ; in Norwich 
287 ; in Deerfield, 288. 

Emerson, 2. 

Emotions strike ujj obliqtiely, 279. 



INDEX. 



317 



Epithets follow isothermal lines, 114. 
Erasmus, colloquies of, 87 ; naiifragium 

or shipwreck of, 88. 
Erectile heads, men of genius with, 7. 
Essaya, diluted, GG. 
Essex Street, 272. 

Esther, Queen, and Ahasuerus, 309. 
Eternity, remembering one's self in, 

201. 
Everlasting, the herb, its suggestions, 

7G. 
Exercise, scientifically examined, 166. 
Ex pede Herculem, 109. 
Experience, a solemn fowl; her eggs, 

271. 
Experts in crime and suffering, 33. 

Faces, negative, 141. 

Facts, horror of generous minds for 
what are commonly called, 5 ; the 
brute beasts of the intelligence, 5; 
men of, 142. 

Family, man of, 20. 

Fancies, youthful, 267. 

Farewell, the Author's, 313. 

Fault found with everything worth say- 
ing, 111. 

Feeling that we have been in the same 
condition before, 73 ; modes of explain- 
ing it, 74, 75. 

Feelings, every person's, have a front- 
door and a side-door, 128. 

Fields, James T., 21. 

Fifty cents, a figure of rhetoric, 262. 

Flash phraseology, 256. 

Flavor, nothing knows its own, 55. 

Fleet of our companions, 94. 

Flowers, why poets talk so much of, 22. 

Franklin-place, front-yards in, 272. 

French exercise, Benjamin Franklin's, 
58, 130. 

Friends shown up by story-tellers, 61. 

Friendship does not authorize one to say 
disagreeable things, 51. 

Front-door and side-door to our feelings, 
128. 

Fruit, green, intellectual, these United 
States a great market for, 261 ; 
mourning, 307. 

Fuel, carbon and bread and cheese are 
equally, 155. 

Funny, authors ashamed of being, 50. 

" Fust-rate " and other vulgarism, 28. 

Geese for swans, 233. 

Genius, a weak flavor of, 3 ; the advent 

of, a surprise, 54. 
Gift-enterprises, Nature's, 55. 
Gilbert, the French poet, 184. 
Gil Bias, the archbishop served him 

right, 51 ; motto from, 199. 
Gilman, Arthur, 21. 
Gilpin, Daddy, 231. 
Gingko-txee, 277. 
Girls' story in " Book of Martyrs," 305 

two young, their fall from gallery. 



Gizzard and. liver never confounded 

309. 
Good-by, the Author's, 313. 
Grammar, higher law in, 40. 
Grammar of Assent. ISTewman's, 14. 
Gravestones, transplanting of, 239. 
Green fruit, intellectual, 201. 
Ground-bait, literary, 38. 

HABrr, what its essence is, 155. 

Hand, tlie great wooden, 205. 

" Haow ? " whetlier final, 110. 

Harvard University, 20. 

Hat, the old gentleman opposite's white, 

177 ; tlie author's youthful Leghorn, 

177. 
Hats, aphorisms concerning, 177. 
Hawthorne, 2. 
Hearts, inscriptions on, 240. 
Heresy, burning for, experts in, would 

be found in any large city, 33. 
Historian, the quotation from, on pun« 

ning, 13. 
Honey, emptying the jug of, 17. 
Hoosac Tunnel, completion of the, 25. 
Horse-chestnut at Rockport, 289. 
Horses, what they feed , 106. 
Hospitality depends on latitude, 302. 
Hot day, sounds of, 3'"2, 
Hotel de VUnivsrs ^ des Etals Unis. 

120. 
Housatonic, the Professor's dwelling by, 

244. 
Houses, dying out of, 241 ; killed by 

commercial smashes, 241 ; shape 

themselves upon our natures, 242. 
House, the boc ' we 've i 241 ; Irish- 
man's at Cambridgepo t, 19. 
Houynhnm Gazette, 227. 
Huckleberries, hail-storm of, 230. 
Hull, how Pope's line is read there, 

128. 
Huma, story of, 8. 
Humanities, cumulative, 23. 
Hyacinth, blue, 228, 229. 
Hysterics, 90. 

Ice in wine-glass, tinkling like cow* 

bells, 78. 
Ideas, age of, in our memories, 31; 

handling them as if they bad the 

three dimensions of solids, 85. 
Imponderables move the world, 136. 
Impromptus, 17. 

Inherited traits show very early, 195. 
Insanity, the logic of an accurate mind 

overtasked, 42 ; becomes a duty under 

certain circumstances, 42. 
Instincts, crushing out of, 304. 
Intemperance, the Author discourses of, 

188. 
Intermittent, poetical, 248. 
Inventive Power, economically used, 

238. 
Iris, cut the yellow hair, 50. 
Irishman's house at Cambridgeport, 19. 
IJand. the. 39. 



318 



INDEX. 



Jailers and undertakers magnetize peo- 
ple, 33. 

Jauiidice, as a token of affection, 133. 

John and Thomas, their dialogue of six 
persons, 53. 

John, the young fellow called, 54, 65, 
73, 79, 101, 113, 174, 187, 192, 194, 207, 
218, 230, 251, 257, 260, 307, 312. 

Johnson, Dr., his remark on attacks, 
114; lines to Thrale, 151. 

Judgment, standard of, how to estab- 
lish, 14. 

Keats, 184. 

Kehie, his poem, 311. 

"Kerridge," and other characteristic 

expressions, 109. 
Kirke White, 185. 
Knowledge, little streaks of specialized, 

breed conceit, 9. 
Knuckles, marks of» on broken glass, 

108. 

Lady, the real, not sensitive if looked 
at, 194. 

Lady-Boarder, the, with autograph- 
book, 6. 

Landlady, 52, 72, 107, 304, 311. 

Landlady's daughter, 16, 18, 57, 138, 221, 
230, 307, 311. 

Landon, Letitia, 306. 

Latter-day Warnings, 24. 

Laughter and tears, wind and water- 
power, 90. 

Lecturers, grooves in their minds, 65; 
talking in streaks out of their lec- 
tures, 65 ; get homesick, 142 ; attacks 
upon, 303. 

Lectures, feelings connected with their 
delivery, 138; popular, what they 
should have, 139 ; old, 139 ; what they 
ought to be, 140. 

Leibnitz, remark of, 1. 

Les SocUtes Polyphysiophilosophiqucs, 
130. 

Letter to an ambitious young man, 289. 

Letters with various requests, 69. 

Leviathan, launch of, 72. 

Life, experience of, 29 ; compared to 
transcript of it, 59 ; compared to 
books, 134; divisible into fifteen pe- 
riods, 153 ; early, revelations concern- 
ing, 202 ; its experiences, 275. 

Lilac leaf-buds, 228, 229. 

Lion, the leaden one at Alnwick, 281. 

Liston thought himself a tragic actor, 91. 

Literary pickpockets, 51. 

Living Temple, The, 175. 

Lochiel rocked in cradle when old, 82. 

Log, using old schoolmates as, to mark 
our rate of sailing, 93. 

Logical minds, what they do, 14. 

Longfellow, 2. 

Long path, the, 304 ; walking together, 
313. 

Lowell, James Russell, 23. 

Love-capacity, 270. 



Love, Introduction to, 210; its rolatips 

solubility in the speech of men and 

women, 271. 
Ludicrous, a divine idea, 92. 
Luniversary, return of, 49. 
Lyric conception liits like a bullet, 98. 

Macaulay-floweks of Literature, 13. 

"Magazine, Northern," got up by the 
"Come-Outers," 120. 

Maine, willows in, 288. 

Man of family, 20. 

Map, photograpli of, on the wall, 243. 

Mare Rubrum, 122. 

Marigold, its suggestions, 76. 

Mather, Cotton, 67, 299. 

Meerschaums and poems must be kept 
and used, 101, 103. 

Men, self-made, 20; all, love all wom- 
en, 221. 

Mesalliance, dreadful consequences of, 
215. 

Middle-aged female, takes offence, 30. 

Millionism, green stage of, 308. 

Milton compared to a Saint-Germain 
pear, etc., 83. 

Mind, automatic actions of, 134. 

Minds, classification of, 1 ; jerky ones 
fatiguing, 6 ; logical, what they do, 
14 ; calm and clear, best basis for love 
and friendship, 131 ; saturation-point 
of, 133. 

Minister, my old, his remarks on want 
of attention, 30. 

Misery, a great one puts a new stamp 
on us, 32. 

Misfortune, professional dealers in, 33. 

Misprints, 49. 

Molasses, Melasses, or Molossa's, 67. 

Mora, Italian game of conversation com- 
pared to, 15. 

Moralist, the great, quotation from, on 
punning, 12. 

Motley, John Lothrop, 2, 20. 

Mountains and sea, 264. 

Mourning fruit, 307. 

Mug, the bitten, 200. 

Muliebrity and femiueity in voice, 216. 

Musa, 249. 

Muscular powers, when they decline 
156. 

Muse, the, 249. 

Musicians, odd movements of, 85. 

Music, its effects different from thoughfe 
132. 

Mutual Admiration, Society of, ^. 

My Lady's Cheek (verse), 153. 

Myrtle Street, discovered by the Pro- 
fessor, 165; description of, 105: gar- 
den in, 272. 

Nahant, 265. 

Nature, Amen of, 229 ; leaking of. mto 

cities, 273. 
Nautilus, The Chambered, 97. 
Nerve-playing, masters of, 129i 
Nerve-tapping, 6. 



INDEX. 



319 



Nerve, olfactory, connection of, with 
brain, 77. 

Newman's Grammar of Assent, 147. 

Newton, his speech about tlie cliild and 
the pebbles, 84. 

Naushon Island, 39. 

Norwich, elms in, 2S7 ; how not to pro- 
nounce, 288. 

Novel, one, everybody has stuff for, 59 ; 
why I do not write a, 59. 

Oak, its one mark of Biipremaoy, 232; 

at Beverly Farms, 288. 

Ocean, the, two men walkingr by, 83. 

Old Age, starting point of, 151 ; allegory 
of, 151 ; approach of, 152 ; how nature 
cheats us into, 154 ; habits the great 
mark of, 155 ; in the Professor's con- 
temporaries, 160 ; remedies for, 1G3 ; 
excellent remedy for, 173. 

Old Gentleman opposite, 3, 53, CI, 8G, 
99, 174, 177, 178, 197, 208, 210, 312, 313. 

Old Man, a person startled when he 
first hears himself called so, 154. 

Old Men, always poets if they ever have 
been, 100. 

Omens, of childhood, 205. 

One-hoss-shay, The Wonderful, 252. 

"Our Sumatra Correspondence," 117. 

Pail, the white pine, of water, 200. 

Parallelism, without identity, in ori- 
ental and occidental nature, 237. 

Parentheses, dismount the reader, 179. 

Parson Turell's Legacy, 297. 

Path, the long, 277. 

Pears, men are like, in coming to ma- 
turity, 82. 

Pedal locomotives, 168. 

Peirce, 2. 

Phosphorus, its suggestions, 75. 

Photographs of the Past, 242. 

Phrases, complimentary, applied to au- 
thors, what determines them, 115. 

Physalia, 97. 

Pie, the young fellow treats, disrespect- 
fully, 79 ; the Author takes too large 
a piece of, 80. 

Piecrust, poems, etc., written under in- 
fluence of, 80. 

Pillar, the Hangman's, 288 et seq. 

Pinkney, William, 7. 

Pirates, Danish, their skins on church 
doors, 107. 

Plagiarism, Author's virtuous disgust 
for, 146. 

Pocket-book fever, 207. 

Poem — with the slight alterations, 48. 

Poems, alterations of, 47 ; have a bo-iy 
and a soul, 99; green state of, 101 
porous like meerschaums. 103 ; post- 
prandial, the Professor's idea of, 222. 

Poet, my friend the, 98, 128, 174, 178 
*.t ."pq., 183, 222, 223, 225. 

Poets love verses while warm from their 
minds, 101 ; two kinds of, 183; apt to 
act mechanically on their brains, 187. 



Poets and artists, why like to be prone 
to abuse of stimulants, 199. 

Poetaster who has tasted type, 293. 

Poetical impulse external, 99. 

Poetry uses white light for its main ob- 
ject, 50. 

Polish lance, 19. 

Poor relation in black bombazine, 86, 
101, 208, 262, 311. 

Poplar, murder of one, 232. 

Port-chuck, his vivacious sally, 177. 

Portsm'-uth, how not to pronounce, 288. 

Powersi, little localized, breed conceit, 

Preacher, dull, might lapse into quasi 
heathenism, 29. 

"Prelude," the Professor's, 296. 

Prentiss, Dame, 200. 

Pride in a woman, 271. 

Prince Rupert's drops of literature, 38» 

Principle against obvious facts, 56. 

Private Journal, extract from my, 246. 

Private theatricals, 43. 

Probabilities provided with buffers, 56. 

Profession, literary men should have a, 
179. 

Professor, my friend the, 26, 72, 81, 90, 
108, 114, 120, 148 et seq., 174, 178 et 
seq., 194, 195, 196, 225, 241 ei seq.^ 
252, 295 et seq. 

Prologue, 45. 

Public Garden, 273. 

Pugilists, when " stale," 156. 

Punning, quotations respecting, 12. 

Puns, law respecting, 11 ; what they 
consist in, 50 ; surreptitiously circu- 
lated among the company, 251. 

Pupil of the eye, simile concerning, the 
Author disgorges, 144. 

Quantity, false, Sidney Smith's remark 
on, 110. 

Race of life, the, report of running in, 

95. 
Races, our sympathies go naturally with 

higher, 66. 
Racing, not republican, 34 ; records ofj 

36. 
Raphael and Michael Angelo, 204. 
Raepail's proof-sheets, 25. 
Eat des Salons d Lecture, 58. 
Reading for the sake of talking, 134 ; a 

man's and a woman's, 275. 
RecoUe'^tions, trivial, essential to oup 

ident.ty, 209. 
Relatives, opinions of, as to a man's 

pov<rers, 54. 
Repeating one's self, 7. 
Reputation, living on contingent, 61. 
Reputations, conventional, 38. 
"Retiring" at night, etiquette of, 208. 
Rhode Island, near what place, 233. 
Rhymes, old, we get tired of, 18 ; bad to 

che\V upon, 292. 
Ridiculous, love of, dangerous to litoi> 

ary men, 90. 



320 



INDEX. 



Eoby, Joseph, 245. 

Roses, damask, 227, 229. 

Rowing, nearest approach to flying, 168 ; 

its excellences, 1G9 ; its joys, 170. 
•'Royal George," the, Cowper's poem 

on, 281. 
Eum, the term applied by low people to 

noble fluids, 190. 

Saas-plates, 308. 

Saddle-leather compared to sole-leather, 
l(i6. 

*'Salitisfahction," a tepid expression, 
lO'J. 

Saint Genevieve, visit to church of, 280. 

*' Saints and their bodies," an admirable 
Essay, 163. 

Bantorini's laughing-muscle, 194. 

Saturday Club, the, of Boston, 2. 

Saving one's thoughts, 27. 

Schoolmistress, the, 32, 43, 61, 87, 107, 
117, 124, 125, 135, 183, 202 et seq., 208, 
210eZ5e?., 227, 239, 246 et seq., 266, 
309 ei seq., 313. 

"Science," the Professor's inward smile 
at her airs, 179. 

Scientific certainty has no spring in it, 
56. 

Scientific knowledge partakes of inso- 
lence, 55. 

Scraping the floor, effect of, 50. 

Sea and Mountains, 264. 

Seed capsule (of poems), 200. 

Self-determining power, limitation of, 
89. 

Self-esteem, with good ground, is impos- 
ing, 10. 

Belf-made men, 19. 

Sermon, proposed, of the Author, 86. 

Sermons, feeble, hard to listen to, but 
may act inductively, 29. 

Sentiments, all splashed and streaked 
with, 229. 

Seven Wise Men of Boston, their say- 
ings, 124. 

Shakespeare, old copy, with flakes of pie- 
crust between its leaves, 78. 

Shawl, the Indian blanket, 19. 

Shortening weapons and lengthening 
boundaries, 19. 

Ship, the, and martin-house, 207. 

Ships, afraid of, 204. 

Shop-blinds, iron, produce a shiver, 267. 

Gierra Leone, native of enjoyinj him- 
self, 302. 

Sight, pretended failure of, in old per- 
sons, 173. 

Sigourney, Mrs., 8. 

Similitude and analogies, ocean of, 84. 

Sin, its tools and their handle, 124 ; in- 
troduction to, 209. 

Smell, as coimected with the memory, 
etc., 75. 

Smile, the terrible, 192. 

Smith, Sidney, surgical operation pro- 
posed by, 48 ; abused by London 
Quarterly Reviev/, 91, 



Sneaking fellows to be regarded ten- 
derly, 219. 

Socictes^ les, Polyphysiophilosophiques, 
136. 

Societies of mutual admiration, 2. 

Soul, its concentric envelopes, 241. 

Sounds, suggestive ones, 211, 212. 

Sparring, the Professor sees a little, and 
describes it, 171. 

Spoken language, plastic, 27. 

Sporting men, virtues of, 37. 

Spring has come, 197. 

Squirming when old falsehoods are 
turned over, 113. 

Stage-Ruffian, the, 53. 

"Stars, the, and the earth," a little 
book, referred to, 265. 

State House, Boston, the hub of the so- 
lar system, 125. 

" Statoo of deceased infant," 109. 

Stillicidium, sentimental. SO. 

Stone, flat, turning over of. 111. 

Stranger, who came with young fellow 
called John, 125, 307. 

" Strap ! " my man John's story, 106. 

Strasburg Cathedral, rocking of its 
spire, 285. 

Striking in of thoughts and feelings 
134. 

Stuart, his two portraits, 22. 

Sullivan, John, 21. 

Summer residence, choice of, 265. 

Sumner, 2. 

Sun and Shadow, 41. 

Sunday mornings, how the Author 
shows his respect for, 174. 

Swans, taking his ducks for, 273. 

Swift, property restored to, 146. 

Swords, Roman and American, 19. 

Sylva Novanglica, 236. 

Syntax, Dr., 231. 

Talent, a little, makes people jealous, 3. 

Talkers, real, 143. 

Talking like playing at a mark with an 
engine, 28 ; one of the fine arts, 52. 

Teapot, literary, 62. 

The last Blossom, 161. 

The old Man Dreams, 68. 

The two Armies, 225. 

The Voiceless, 306. 

Theological students, w^ all are, 29. 

Thought revolves in cycles, 73; if ut- 
tered, is a kind of excretion, 196. 

Thoughts may be original, though often 
before uttered, . ; saving, 27 ; shaped 
in conversation, 27 ; tell worst to min- 
ister and best to young people, 30; 
my best seem always old, 31 ; real, 
knock out somebody's wind, 113. 

Thought-Sprinklers, 27. 

Time and space, 206. 

Tobacco-stain may strike into character, 
103. 

Tobacco-stopper, lovely one, 102. 

Towns, small, not more BLOdest than 
cities^ 126. 



INDEX. 



321 



Toj', author carves a wonderful, at Mar- 
seiUes, 180. 

Toys moved by sand, caution from one, 
80. 

Travel, maxims relating to, 278 ; recol- 
lections of, 279. 

Tree, growth of, as shown by rings of 
wood, 28G ; slice of a hemlock, 28G ; 
its growth compared to human lives, 
286. 

Trees, great, 230 ; mother-idea in each 
kind of, 232; afraid of measuring- 
tape, 233 ; Mr. Emerson's report on, 
234 ; of America, our friend's inter- 
esting work on, 23G. 

Tree-wives, 230. 

Triads, writing in, 85. 

Trois Freres, dinners at the, 78. 

Trotting, democratic and favorable to 
many virtues, 37 ; matches not races, 
37. 

Truth, primary relations with, 14. 

Truths and lies compared to cubes and 
spheres, 116. 

Tupper, 16, 311. 

Tupperian wisdom, 271. 

Tutor, my late Latin, his verses, 262. 

Tyburn, 33. 

Unloved, the, 305. 

Veneering in conversation, 143. 

Verse, proper medium for revealing our 

secrets, 60. 
Verses, Album, 15 ; abstinence from writ- 
ing, the mark of a poet, 201. 
Verse-writers, their peculiarities, 292. 
Violins, soaked in music, 103 ; take a 

century to dry, 104. 
Virtues, negative, 262. 
Visitors, getting rid of, when their visit 

is over, 17. 
Voice, the Teutonic maiden's, 215 ; the 

Grerman woman's, 216 ; the little child's 

in the hospital, 217. 
Voices, certain female, 214 ; fearfully 

sweet ones, 214 ; hard and sharp, 216 ; 

people do not know their own, 217 ; 

sweet, must belong to good spirits, 

217. 



Voleur, brand of, on oralley rogues, 106. 
Voliune, man of one, 143. 

Walking arm against arm, 18 ; laws of, 
72 ; tlie Professor sanctions, 165 ; rid- 
ing and rowing compared with, 167. 

Wasp, sloop of war, 206. 

Watch-paper, the old gentleman's, 211. 

Water, the wliite-pine pail of, 200. 

Wedding, the, 313. 

Wedding-presents, the, 313. 

Wellington, gentle m his old age, 82. 

What we aU think, 146. 

Will, compared to a drop of water in d, 
crystal, 86. 

Willows in Maine, 288. 

Wine of ancients, 66. 

Wit takes imperfect views of things, 50. 

Woman, an excUent instrument for a 
nerve-player, 129 ; to love a, must see 
her through a pin-hole, 221 ; must be 
true as death, 270 ; love-capacity in, 

270 ; marks of low and bad blood in, 

271 ; pride in, 271 ; why she should 
not say too much, 271. 

Women, young, advice to, 49 ; first to 
detect a poet, 183 ; inspire poets, 183 ; 
their praise the poet's reward, 183 ; 
all men love all, 220; all, love all 
men, 221 ; pictures of, 221 ; who have 
weighed all that life can offer, 276. 

Woodbridge, Benjamin, his grave, 239, 
240. 

World, old and new, comparison of their 
types of organization, 236. 

Writing with feet in hot water, 7 ; like 
shooting with a rifle, 28. 

Yes ? in conversation, 18. 

Yoricks, 21. 

Toung Fellow called John, 54, 65, 73, 
79, 101, 113, 174, 187, 192, 194, 207, 
218, 230, 251, 257, 266, 307, 312. 

Young Lady come to be finished off, 10. 

Youth, flakes off like button-wood bark, 
153 ; American, not perfect type of 
physical humanity, 171 ; and age, what 
Author means by, 199. 

ZmMERMANN's Treatise on Solitude, 6. 



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